Law Commons^™

Samantar V. Yousuf: Development In The Laws Governing Civil Torture Claims In U.S. Courts., Solomon Shinerock

Solomon B. Shinerock

The Supreme Court’s recent opinion in Samantar v. Yousuf forecloses one possible avenue by which former foreign-government officials residing in the United States have sought to escape liability for human rights violations. Ruling simply that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 does not provide immunity to individuals, the decision raises the question of what common law principles will govern the issue in the future. This article reviews the case and the common law doctrines that are likely to figure prominently in future civil suits alleging torture. Ultimately, the Samantar decision read together with existing principles of domestic and international …

More Than Just Territorial: The 8th Circuit Establishment A Resourceful Precedent In Claiming Jurisdiction Over Denials To Compel Arbitration, Ashley Marshall

Journal of Dispute Resolution

This note argues that the Eighth Circuit's decision to claim jurisdiction in Industrial Wire Products, Inc. v. Costco Wholesale Corp. was practical and resourceful, as that court is better suited to decide matters of contract interpretation. The highly specialized Federal Circuit should devote its time and expertise to governing cases in particular areas of law, like patent litigation and administrative law. This note further argues that the Eighth Circuit preserved judicial resources and adhered to the parties' intentions in holding that the patent infringement claims were required to proceed through arbitration.

You Infringed My Patent, Now Wait Until I Sue You: The Federal Circuit’S Decision In Avocent Huntsville Corp. V. Aten International Co., Marta Vanegas

Marta R. Vanegas LL.M.

The Federal Circuit recently held that it lacked personal jurisdiction over a foreign defendant, because neither the patentee’s sales within the forum state, nor their patent enforcement letters constituted sufficient contacts for personal jurisdiction. This Note argues that the Federal Circuit erroneously held that a patentee’s sales in the forum state are irrelevant to specific personal jurisdiction. The Note surveys the legal background of personal jurisdiction in declaratory judgment actions, particularly in the patent context. The Note then argues that the Federal Circuit's recent line of cases incorrectly held that a patentee’s sales of the patented product within the forum …

International Law Colloquia, Spring 2006 Series, Roger Alford, Laura Dickinson, Mark Drumbl, Karen Knop, Diane Orentlicher, Brad Roth, Edward Swaine

Diane Orentlicher

Spring 2006 Presenters: February 10: Laura A. Dickinson (University of Connecticut School of Law), Democracy and Trust February 17: Mark A. Drumbl (Washington and Lee University School of Law), Atrocity and Punishment February 24: Karen Knop (University of Toronto Faculty of Law), Enemies and Outlaws: War and the Public/Private Citizen March 3: Brad R. Roth (Wayne State University Department of Political Science), State Sovereignty, International Legality, and Moral Disagreement April 7: Diane Orentlicher (American University Washington College of Law), Whose Justice? Reconciling Universal Jurisdiction with Democratic Principles April 14: Roger P. Alford (Pepperdine University School of Law), Foreign Relations as …

Derailed By The D.C. Circuit: Getting Network Management Regulation Back On Track, Edward B. Mulligan V

Federal Communications Law Journal

As the Internet continues to play a more central role in the daily lives of Americans, concerns about how Internet service providers manage their networks have arisen. Responding to these concerns and recognizing the importance of maintaining the open and competitive nature of the Internet, the FCC has taken incremental steps to regulate network management practices. Perhaps the most significant of these steps was its August 2008 Memorandum Decision and Order in which the FCC condemned Comcast Corporation's network management practices as "discriminatory and arbitrary." In that Order, the FCC required that Comcast (1) adopt new practices that complied with …

A Policy Of Disregarding Public Policy: Pursuing The Comity Of Nations In Private International Law, Anthony Bessette

Anthony Bessette

Private agreements stipulating the forum, procedure, and substantive law to govern commercial relationships have become a common feature of international business. Companies that enter international contracts, and thus the economies of their countries to an extent, rely on them for certainty and stability. Almost all countries that honor foreign jurisdiction clauses reserve an exception for public policy. U.S. law has drifted from international standards and its modern roots in Bremen by narrowing its public policy exception to the vanishing point. This article examine the history of foreign jurisdiction clauses, the way other countries approach them, and recent developments which may …

Extraterritoriality As Standing: A Standing Theory Of The Extraterritorial Application Of The Securities Laws, Erez Reuveni

Erez Reuveni

This Article contends that the current treatment of the extraterritorial scope of the 1934 Securities Exchange Act as a question of subject matter jurisdiction is wrong. Although the Act is silent as to its extraterritorial application, for over forty years courts have analyzed the Act’s extraterritorial scope as a question of subject matter jurisdiction, relying on the so-called “conduct” and “effects” tests. Because courts apply these tests in an ad hoc, case-by-case manner, they are inherently unpredictable and unnecessarily complicated. This state of affairs has become particularly troublesome in recent years, as so-called “foreign-cubed” securities fraud lawsuits - lawsuits filed …

Prosecute The Cheerleader, Save The World?: Asserting Federal Jurisdiction Over Child Pornography Crimes Committed Through "Sexting", Isaac A. Mcbeth

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Lingering Influence Of Richard Ii And Lord Coke In The American Admiralty, Graydon S. Staring

Graydon S. Staring

It must be fair to say that a useful commercial and legal regime should be spread as wide as its usefulness, with as few artificial and irrelevant barriers as possible. All of our irrelevant barriers have been discredited in various situations, but two of them, viz. as to contracts made on land or to be performed in part on land, remain anomalously in two irrational and inconvenient applications. As they have no statutory sanction, they can be corrected by the courts, just as they have nullified them both in other situations and rationalized the jurisdiction in other respects. Cease the …

Piedmont Environmental Council V. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Christopher Brown

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Caci Premier Technology, Inc. V. Rhodes, Ian Duggan

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

George & Co., Llc V. Imagination Entertainment Ltd., Steven K. Hardy

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Cyberspace Is Outside The Schoolhouse Gate: Offensive Online Student Speech Receives First Amendment Protection, Joseph Tomain

Joseph A Tomain

Doctrinal and normative analysis show that schools do not possess jurisdiction over offensive online student speech, at least when it does not cause a substantial disruption of the school environment. This article is a timely analysis on the limits of school jurisdiction over offensive online student speech.

On February 4, 2010, two different Third Circuit panels issued opinions reaching opposite conclusions on whether schools may punish students based on online speech created by students when they are off-campus; one of these cases may be heard en banc. Another case addressing this same issue is currently pending before the Second Circuit. …

Patent Litigation, Personal Jurisdiction, And The Public Good, Megan M. La Belle

Megan M La Belle

There is consensus among scholars, policymakers, and industry leaders that our patent system currently faces a crisis of confidence as a result of the proliferation of bad patents. For now, validity challenges asserted in litigation – usually as a defense to a claim of patent infringement – serve as the primary gatekeeper of patent quality. When an alleged infringer’s validity challenge is successful, the court invalidates the patent and the intellectual property enters the public domain where anyone may use it. This creates a “public good” which inures to the benefit of society at large. In recent years, scholars have …

A Sense Of Duty: The Illusory Criminal Jurisdiction Of The U.S./Iraq Status Of Forces Agreement, Chris Jenks

San Diego International Law Journal

This Article will examine the Iraq SOFA’s use of duty status as a basis for determining which State has primary jurisdiction over U.S. service members for alleged criminal misconduct in Iraq. In the third section, the Article will briefly explain what a SOFA is, and how and why they are used, focusing on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) SOFA. This section will also utilize examples of U.S. service member misconduct, both associated with and detached from official duty, to illustrate the application of an acts-based SOFA jurisdiction article. The fourth section turns to the Iraq SOFA’s status-based jurisdiction article, …

Home Is Where The Hq Is: Corporate Citizenship Following The Supreme Court's Decision In Hertz V. Friend, Sean-Patrick Wilson, Keena M. Hausmann, Paul A. Rosenthal

Sean-Patrick Wilson

On February 23, 2010, the United States Supreme Court released its decision in the case of Hertz Corp. v. Friend, 559 U.S. ___ (2010), no. 08-1107 (“Hertz”). Th Hertz case represents the only time the Supreme Court has addressed the question of where a business’s “principal place of business” is located for purposes of determining diversity jurisdiction. The Court’s ruling is certain to have significant ramifications for American corporations, as it determines when corporations can be sued in federal court (as they might prefer), or in plaintiff-friendly state courts. As the most authoritative case discussing diversity jurisdiction for corporations today, …

Jurisdictional Discovery In United States Federal Courts, S. I. Strong

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Original Habeas Redux, Lee B. Kovarsky

Lee Kovarsky

In "Original Habeas Redux," I map the modern dimensions of the Supreme Court’s most exotic jurisdiction—the original habeas writ. The Court has not issued such relief since 1925 and, until recently, had not ordered a case transferred pursuant to that authority in over fifty years. In August 2009, by transferring a capital prisoner’s original habeas petition to a federal district court rather than dismissing it outright, In re Davis abruptly thrust this obscure power back into mainstream legal debate over both the death penalty and the Supreme Court’s appellate jurisdiction. Scrambling to understand how the authority has evolved since its …

Anna Nicole Smith Goes Shopping: The New Forum Shopping Problem In Bankruptcy, Gilbert Marcus Cole, Todd J. Zywicki

Gilbert Marcus Cole

The American bankruptcy system is a hybrid of state law and federal bankruptcy law. Under the Butner principle, federal bankruptcy courts preserve substantive non-bankruptcy law entitlements in bankruptcy unless bankruptcy policies compel a contrary result. This hybrid system, however, gives rise to the threat of forum-shopping if parties attempt to invoke bankruptcy jurisdiction for improper purposes, namely to rearrange non-bankruptcy entitlements to advance no coherent bankruptcy policy. Modern developments in bankruptcy law, as exemplified in the case of Marshall v. Marshall raise a novel threat of bankruptcy forum-shopping. Marshall involved the bankruptcy of tabloid starlet Anna Nicole Smith and her …

A Distributive Theory Of Criminal Law, Aya Gruber

Aya Gruber

In criminal law circles, the accepted wisdom is that there are two and only two true justifications of punishment―retributivism and utilitarianism. The multitude of moral claims about punishment can thus be reduced to two propositions: (1) Punishment should be imposed because defendants deserve it; and/or (2) punishment should be imposed because it makes society safer. At the same time, most penal scholars notice the trend in criminal law to de-emphasize intent, centralize harm, and focus on victims, but they largely write off this trend as an irrational return to antiquated notions of vengeance. This Article asserts that there is in …

The Structural Safeguards Of Federal Jurisdiction, Tara L. Grove

Tara L. Grove

Scholars have long debated Congress’s power to curb federal jurisdiction and have consistently assumed that the constitutional limits on Congress’s authority (if any) must be judicially enforceable and found in the text and structure of Article III. In this Article, I challenge that fundamental assumption. I argue that the primary constitutional protection for the federal judiciary lies instead in the bicameralism and presentment requirements of Article I. These Article I lawmaking procedures give competing political factions (even political minorities) considerable power to “veto” legislation. Drawing on recent social science and legal scholarship, I argue that political factions are particularly likely …

The Anticipation Misconception, Colin P. Marks

Colin P. Marks

Many commentators and courts have cited to the Supreme Court decision of Hickman v. Taylor as the genesis of the work product doctrine and the requirement that, to be afforded protection, the material in question must be generated “in anticipation of litigation.” The oft quoted policy justification for the protection afforded is that attorneys should be allowed a “zone of privacy” within which to prepare their case for the client. This justification supports limiting protection only to work generated “in anticipation of litigation,” because, presumably, outside of this context there is no need for the “zone of privacy.” However, a …

Three Obstacles To The Promotion Of Corporate Social Responsibility By Means Of The Alien Tort Claims Act: The Sosa Court's Incoherent Conception Of The Law Of Nations, The "Purposive" Action Requirement For Aiding And Abetting, And The State Action Requirement For Primary Liability, David A. Dana, Michael Barsa

Faculty Working Papers

The ATCA could be a powerful tool to promote corporate CSR, especially in developing countries where local legal restraints are weak. But despite the good normative reasons why the ATCA should be used in this way, serious obstacles remain. The Supreme Court's ahistorical and incoherent formulation of the "law of nations" fails to promote the development of the ATCA in ways that would cover even serious environmental harm. Also, the federal courts' confused jurisprudence concerning aiding and abetting and state action creates too many loopholes through which egregious corporate behavior may slip unpunished. In order to overcome these obstacles, we …

Where Forum Non Conveniens And Preemptive Jurisdiction Collide: An Analytical Look At Latin American Preemptive Jurisdiction Laws In The United States, Jennifer L. Woulfe

Saint Louis University Public Law Review

No abstract provided.

Federal Preemption: A Roadmap For The Application Of Tribal Law In State Courts, Jackie Gardina

American Indian Law Review

This article contends that state courts are not necessarily free to apply state law when the courts are exercising concurrent adjudicative jurisdiction with tribal courts. Instead, Indian law principles of preemption direct state courts to apply tribal law in certain cases. A guiding principle emerges from the preemption analysis: if a tribe has legislative jurisdication over the dispute, tribal law must ordinarily be applied. In these instances, a state's laws, including its choice-of-law rules, are preempted by federal common law because their application interferes with the federal government's and the tribes' interest in promoting tribal self-government, including the tribes' ability …

Closing The Loop On Guantanamo, Scott Sullivan, Joshua Colangelo-Bryan

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Denying Choice Of Forum: An Interference By The Massachusetts Trial Court With Domestic Violence Victims’ Rights And Safety, Margaret B. Drew, Marilu E. Gresens

Faculty Publications

On May 4, 2009, the Chief Justice of Administration and Management of the Massachusetts Trial Court launched a pilot program in the Norfolk Division of the Probate and Family Court Department through an Administrative Order entitled, in pertient part, “for the Interdepartmental Transfer of Certain Abuse Prevention Proceedings”. This pilot program authorizes a judge of the Norfolk Division of the Probate and Family Court to initiate interdepartmental transfers of civil protection order petitions pending in other court departments where the parties have related domestic relations matters pending in the Probate and Family Court.

This article discusses how the pilot program …

The Case For Overseas Article Iii Courts: The Blackwater Effect And Criminal Accountability In The Age Of Privatization, Alan F. Williams

Alan F. Williams

No abstract provided.

Exhaustion Of Administrative Remedies In Immigration Cases: Finding Jurisdiction To Review Unexhausted Claims The Board Of Immigration Appeals Considers Sua Sponte On The Merits, Larry R. Fleurantin

Larry R. Fleurantin

In order for an appellate court to review an agency action, the action must be final and all administrative remedies must be exhausted. With regard to the exhaustion requirement, the author examines how the majority of circuits have held that federal circuit courts have jurisdiction to review immigration claims considered sua sponte by the Board of Immigration Appeals. However, the Eleventh Circuit seems to be the one outlier finding no jurisdiction, and the author believes the holding in Amaya-Artunduaga v. United States Attorney General to be incorrect and recommends it be overruled

Federal Preemption: A Roadmap For The Application Of Tribal Law In State Courts, Jackie A. Gardina

Jackie A Gardina

This Article contends state courts are not necessarily free to apply state law when the state court is exercising concurrent adjudicative jurisdiction with tribal courts. Indian law principles of pre-emption direct state courts to apply tribal law in certain cases. A guiding principle emerges; if a tribe has legislative jurisdiction over the dispute then tribal law ordinarily must be applied. In these instances, a state’s laws, including its choice of law rules, are preempted by federal common law because their application interferes with the federal government’s and the tribe’s interest in promoting tribal self-government, including the tribe’s ability to create …