Law Commons^™

Sexual Abuse Of Female Inmates In Federal Prisons, Brenda Smith

Congressional and Other Testimony

This Article discusses the modest aspirations of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (“PREA”) that passed unanimously in the United States Congress in 2003. The Article posits that PREA created opportunities for holding correctional authorities accountable by creating a baseline for safety and setting more transparent expectations for agencies’ practices for protecting prisoners from sexual abuse. Additionally, the Article posits that PREA enhanced the evolving standards of decency for the Eighth Amendment and articulated clear expectations of correctional authorities to provide sexual safety for people in custody.

Legal Reform To Enhance Global Text And Data Mining Research, Sean Flynn

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

Text and data mining (TDM) research involves the process of collecting vast amounts of digitized material and using software to analyze and extract information from such information. TDM is a crucial first step to addressing some of the world’s greatest scientific and societal challenges. But, as we show in this article, a patchwork of copyright laws across jurisdictions limits where and how TDM research can occur. We discuss how the World Intellectual Property Organization and legislatures around the world can promote harmonization of copyright exceptions for various research uses. Addressing research uses, including for TDM, in copyright reform can help …

Brief Of Human Rights And Labor Rights Organizations And Experts As Amici Curiae In Support Of Petitioners, Janie A. Chuang

Amicus Briefs

Since Congress first enacted the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, it has expanded and strengthened it through successive reauthorizations. Congress has broadened the scope of the TVPRA in order to impose criminal and civil liability on individuals, corporations, and other legal persons who use, or knowingly benefit from ventures that use, forced labor, as well as those who aid and abet these practices. Through this legislation, Congress has bolstered efforts to hold traffickers accountable, opening the courthouse doors to victims of these egregious crimes.

The Ninth Circuit's decision below undermined the very statutory scheme Congress put in place to …

Transformative Immigration Lawyering, Jayesh Rathod

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Movement actors have long sought expansive reforms in U.S. immigration law, but two deep-seated tendencies are obstructing those efforts: incrementalism and path dependence. This Essay recommends that law clinics counter these forces by setting ambitious goals for structural change and by equipping students with knowledge and skills needed for transformative lawyering.

Beware The Proposed Us Crypto Regulation— It May Be A Trojan Horse, Hilary J. Allen

Popular Media

Following the spectacular failure of crypto exchange FTX International, there have been renewed calls for crypto legislation (including from the industry itself).But many of the proposals so far would be worse than the status quo — at least for the general public. Crypto firms such as FTX were involved in drafting many of the mooted US bills. The exchange’s implosion should not become a pretext for rushing these into law.

Brief Of Amici Curiae In Support Of Applicant' Application To Vacate The Injunction In Biden V. Nebraska, Jeffrey Lubbers

Amicus Briefs

Amici curiae are law professors at law schools around the nation. They respectfully move for leave to file the enclosed brief in support of Applicants' application to vacate the injunction entered by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit pending appeal of the preliminary injunction issued by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, including leave to file without ten days' notice to the parties, as ordinarily required by this Court's Rule 37.2(a), and leave to file in 8½-by-11-inch format, as provided in Rule 33.2.

Sunshine Laws Behind The Clouds: Limited Transparency In A Time Of National Emergency, Ira P. Robbins

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically changed the way citizens lived their lives, businesses operated, and governments functioned. With most people forced to stay home, the pandemic also disrupted how people received their news and other essential information. Public records and public meetings had to adapt to face the growing challenges in a locked-down world. While some governmental bodies were able to keep up with the threat that COVID-19 posed against transparency, others either failed to acclimate to the new normal or actively took advantage of the circumstances to limit how much the public knew not only about the crisis, but about …

The Status Of Reproduction Rights Organisations (Rros) In Africa, Desmond Oriakhogba, Dick Kawooya

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

This report is based on desk research conducted from June 2021 to May 2022 by way of a survey of publicly available information on Reproduction Rights Organisations (RROs) in all 55 African Union (AU) member states. It is the first of a two-part study. The second part of the study will be conducted as empirical research where data will be obtained from relevant stakeholders in the collective management systems of African countries to address key issues flagged in this report as requiring further evidence.

This report examines the current status of RROs in Africa to help inform policy and legislative …

The 'Merge' Did Not Fix Ethereum, Hilary J. Allen

Popular Media

The Ethereum blockchain that facilitates much of the crypto world last month finally accomplished the long-promised and oft-delayed “Merge”, a technical switch in the way it works.

The Law Of Friends, Ezra Rosser

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

A serious law professor would not write an article about the TV show Friends, but having just written a book and an article, I’m on a “break.” Besides, I’m not that serious a law professor. And Friends is as good a topic as any. For those of us of a certain age—too young to have watched M.A.S.H. when it came out and old enough to remember watching broadcast TV and not just through a streaming service on a device—Friends was and is a big deal. It both captured a particular moment in history and helped make that moment.

Looking back …

The Obsolescence Of Blue Laws In The 21st Century, Ira P. Robbins

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Depending on where in the United States one is located on any given Sunday or Christian holiday, it is against the law to buy a beer or a car, go shopping, hunt, or even play Bingo. This prohibition is a direct result of Blue Laws, alternatively called Sunday Closing Laws or Lord’s Day Acts. Blue Laws frustrate commerce and recreational activities. While at one time they might have aligned with societal values or served a practical secular purpose, such as providing workers with a day of rest, modern society renders Blue Laws obsolete and nonsensical.

Due to rapid change in …

Teaching Case Theory, Binny Miller

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

As the key means of framing a case, case theory is the central problem that lawyers confront in constructing a case, and many of the decisions made during the life of a case are decisions that rest on case theory. Building on the author's earlier scholarship on case theory, this essay articulates a concept of case theory called "storyline," and sets out a framework for teaching this concept. The framework for this process has three basic stages - imagining case theory, evaluating (and constructing) case theory, and choosing case theory. The material for this process is stories, which are the …

On The Misuse Of Regressions Of Price On The Hhi In Merger Review, Jonathan Baker

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The article explains why regressions of price on HHI should not be used in merger review. Both price and HHI are equilibrium outcomes determined by demand, supply, and the factors that drive them. Thus, a regression of price on the HHI does not recover a causal effect that could inform the likely competitive effects of a merger. Nonetheless, economic theory is consistent with the legal presumption that a merger is likely to have adverse competitive effects if it occurs in a concentrated market and makes that market more concentrated.

Reforming Copyright Or Toward Another Science? A More Human Rights-Oriented Approach Under The Rebspa In Constructing A "Right To Research" For Scholarly Publishing, Klaus Beiter

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

This article identifies copyright impediments existing in the sphere of science, to then make (tentative) suggestions as to how these may be overcome. It focuses on scholarly publishing only, and here primarily on digital content, specifically asking whether expensive commercial scholarly publishers continue to “add value” to research in the digital era. The deficits of copyright law and potential solutions thereto are assessed in the light of the right of everyone “to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications” (REBSPA) as laid down in Article 15(1)(b) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) of …

Debunking The Efficacy Of Standard Contract Boilerplate: Part V, David Spratt

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

After five installments, we can end our discussion of contract boilerplate. We have slashed the outdated language and emerged as a clear and contemporary legal writer. Be willing to adapt what has worked well in the past because change is the foundation of human ingenuity.

Courts Without Court, Andrew Guthrie Ferguson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

What role does the physical courthouse play in the administration of criminal justice? This Article uses recent experiments with virtual courts to reimagine a future without criminal courthouses at the center. The key insight of this Article is to reveal how integral physical courts are to carceral control and how the rise of virtual courts helps to decenter power away from judges. This Article examines the effects of online courts on defendants, lawyers, judges, witnesses, victims, and courthouse officials and offers a framework for a better and less court-centered future. By studying post-COVID-19 disruptions around traditional conceptions of place, time, …

War Crimes: History, Basic Concepts, And Structures, Richard J. Wilson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

On May 24, 20022, the Washington Post carried front-page news that a court in Ukraine had sentenced a 21-year-old Russian soldier, Vadim Shishimarin, to life imprisonment for the war crime of premeditated murder of a civilian, 62-year-old Oleksandr Shelipov. The session was the first war crimes trial in Ukraine since Russia's invasion three months earlier.

Research Exceptions In Comparative Copyright, Sean Flynn, Luca Schirru, Michael Palmedo, Andrés Izquierdo

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

This Article categorizes the world’s copyright laws according to the degree to which they provide exceptions to copyright exclusivity for research uses. We classify countries based on the degree to which they have a research exception in their law that is sufficiently open to be able to permit reproduction and communications of copyrighted work needed for academic (i.e. non-commercial) text and data mining (TDM) research. We show that nearly every copyright law has at least one exception that promotes uses for research purposes. We find six different approaches to the provision of research exceptions that implicate application to TDM. Notably, …

Expanded Criminal Defense Lawyering, Jenny Roberts, Ronald Wright

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This review collects and critiques the academic literature on criminal defense lawyering, with an emphasis on empirical work. Research on criminal defense attorneys in the United States has traditionally emphasized scarcity of resources: too many people facing criminal charges who are “too poor to pay” for counsel and not enough funding to pay for the constitutionally mandated lawyers. Scholars have focused on the capacity of different delivery systems, such as public defender offices, to change the ultimate outcomes in criminal cases within their tight budgetary constraints. Over the decades, however, theoretical understandings of the defense attorney’s work have expanded to …

A Science-Based Policy For Managing Free-Roaming Cats, David Hunter, Christopher A. Lepczyk, David C. Duffy, David M. Bird, Michael Calver, Dmitry Cherkassky, Linda Cherkassky, Christopher R. Dickman, David Jessup, Travis Longcore, Scott R. Loss, Kerrie Anne T. Loyd, Peter P. Marra, John M. Marzluff, Reed F. Noss, Daniel Simberloff, Grant C. Sizemore, Stanley A. Temple, Yolanda Van Heezik

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Free-roaming domestic cats (i.e., cats that are owned or unowned and are considered ‘at large’) are globally distributed non-native species that have marked impacts on biodiversity and human health. Despite clear scientific evidence of these impacts, free-roaming cats are either unmanaged or managed using scientifically unsupported and ineffective approaches (e.g., trap-neuter-release [TNR]) in many jurisdictions around the world. A critical first initiative for effective, science-driven management of cats must be broader political and legislative recognition of free-roaming cats as a non-native, invasive species. Designating cats as invasive is important for developing and implementing science-based management plans, which should include efforts …

Trips-Compliant Alternatives For Overcoming Intellectual Property Barriers To Covid-19 Countermeasures, Brook Baker

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

In the aftermath of the recent WTO Ministerial Decision on the TRIPS Agreement (adopted June 17, 2022), there may be some confusion about the many options that countries have for overcoming intellectual property barriers to allow alternative production, distribution, and use of COVID-19 countermeasures. Of course, visibility into the patent landscape for particular products is essential to understanding freedom to operate in terms of products, ingredient, and manufacturing processes, and that work is complicated, though aided by the Medicines Patent Pool MedsPaL and VaxPaL databases and work done by other researchers on COVID-19 vaccine and therapeutics patents . Overcoming patent …

Conceptualizing A 'Right To Research' And Its Implications For Copyright Law: An International And European Perspective, Christophe Geiger, Bernd Justin Jütte

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

Copyright, at international, European and national levels, does not provide a legal framework that prioritizes enabling and incentivizing research using protected works and information to the extent necessary and desirable in a digital, data-driven society in order to build a sustainable ecosystem for innovation and creativity. While small progress has been made, for example with the recent introduction of specific exceptions for research purposes and for text and data mining in certain national legislations as well as in the European Union law, a horizontal approach towards a more research-friendly copyright ecosystem has so far failed to evolve. By revisiting international …

Victim Participation And Social Impact: Contemporary Lessons Of The Eichmann Trial, Diane Orentlicher

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Six decades after the trial of Adolf Eichmann, its legacy is still evolving. Some aspects of the case, deeply controversial at the time, have become settled precedent. In particular, innovative legal grounds for Israeli jurisdiction, widely faulted outside Israel as proceedings got underway, are now accepted precepts of international law. Thus a half century after the trial, a leading expert in international criminal law concluded that jurisdictional and substantive law pioneered in Israel have by and large "stood the test of time." In his view, "The impact of the Eichmann decisions on the development of international criminal law cannot be …

Memoria, Verdad Y Justicia: Situacion Y Perspectivas Etudes: Premiere Partie: Justice Transitionnelle Et Reconciliation, Juan Mendez

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

La evolucion de los principios de justicia transicional en el Derecho Internacional de los Derechos Humanos debe verse con un enfoque juridico que ponga de manifiesto la frondosa jurisprudencia que se ha poducido en respuesta a las trabas y obstAculos en diversos paises para la realizacibn de la justicia. Esto es especialmente cierto en America Latina, donde el sistenma interamericano de proteccion ha establecido con firmeza varias de estas obLigaciones internacionales del Estado. Pern no se trata de reglas aplicables solamente en el mbito interamericano, sino que se irproducen de diversas formas en otros sistemas regionales y tambidn en la …

Interjurisdictional Abortion Wars In The Post-Roe Era, Maya Manian

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The Supreme Court appears poised to overrule fifty years of precedent holding that pre-viability prohibitions on abortion are unconstitutional. In a leaked draft opinion of Dobbs v. Jackson Women Health Organization, Justice Alito proclaims that Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey must be overruled and abortion left to the states to regulate. During oral argument in Dobbs, Justice Kavanaugh suggested that overturning Roe would return the Court to a postion of "neutrality" on abortion. Justice Kavanaugh's assertion falls in line with claims by anti-abortion jurists that reversing Roe would simplify abortion law by returning the issue to the …

Rules Of Engagement: Copyright And Automated Gatekeepers' Influence On Creative Expression, Michael W. Carroll

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This Essay turns questions about artificial intelligence and copyright law around. Rather than focus on algorithms as potential authors, this Essay argues for more attention to the role of algorithms as gatekeepers on social media and how creators adapt their creative choices to meet the demands of these automated tastemakers. Using TikTok’s “For You” algorithm and its role in breaking Lil Nas X’s hit song “Old Town Road” as a case study, this Essay poses the question whether algorithmic gatekeeping is simply a difference in degree or a difference in kind from an artist’s perspective. While tentative, this Essay concludes …

Epidemics And International Law: The Need For International Regulation, Claudio Grossman

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This article presents comments by the author made to open the Miami Law Review conference on Epidemics1 and International Law. Its main purpose is to refer to the impact of COVID-19 on different norms and legal regimes, focusing mainly on the 2005 International Health Regulations (IHR), addressing areas of reform as well as the interactions of those norms with international human rights law. This will include the proposals of change for the 2005 IHR, designed to better protect vulnerable peoples in future global health crises. Some of the ideas presented in this contribution are included in a proposal that I …

Louis Henkin Memorial Lecture University Of Miami Law School, Juan Mendez

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

I am deeply honored to be invited to deliver this year's version of a lecture series honoring Professor Louis Henkin whose contributions to the development of international law-and very specifically to international human rights law - are and very long will continue to be remembered. I am also a bit overwhelmed as I notice that the organizers have put me in the company of wonderful colleagues and masters of this field, several of them my friends and persons whose work I admire. It is also especially gratifying for me to have the occasion of renewing contact with the Henkin family …

Foreword, Stephen Wermiel

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

It is an honor and a pleasure to help the American UniversityLegislationandPolicy Brief carry on its fine tradition of scholarly inquiry into important issues facing the nation, the legislatures and the public policy arena. AULPB is an important forum within WCL for student authors to examine cutting edge, timely issues. It is also a focal point, beyond the bounds of the WCL campus, for authors to consider a broad range of pressing issues that combine law and policy questions.

Transnational Migrant Deterrence, Anita Sinha

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The governance of global migration increasingly relies on what critical migration scholarship refers to as externalized control. Externalization encompasses limiting human mobility through the imposition of migration control measures by transit states, as well as by states that are geographically proximate to destination states. Destination states are at a minimum complicit in the creation and operation of these externalized migration control systems. To capture this phenomenon, this Article offers a reconceptualization of externalization as transnational migration deterrence. The objective ofthis nomenclature is to provide a framework that highlights the role of destination states, to build a lexicon of accountability for …