Law Commons^™

Investment Games, James Fallow Tierney

Duke Law Journal

Popular zero-commission stock trading apps like Robinhood innovate in user-experience design, featuring “gamification” practices—flashy graphics, leaderboards, and the like—that make it attractive, easy, and fun to trade stocks. Regulators are increasingly scrutinizing gamification and other digital engagement practices, with efforts underway at the SEC to adopt rules in broker-dealer and investment-advisor regulation. This attention reflects considerable skepticism about gamification in securities markets. At best, these practices encourage motivation and engagement, and democratize access to financial markets. But at worst, these practices encourage people to trade habitually and unreflectively, and more than they might want. This can lead to undesirable market-wide …

Collective Memory, Criminal Law, And The Trial Of Derek Chauvin, Sean A. Berman

Duke Law Journal

This Note describes how criminal trials for prominent criminal acts contribute to the collective memory of the underlying offense. Hannah Arendt once argued that the purpose of criminal trials is to “render justice, and nothing else.” Unlike criminal trials, political trials strive to produce collective memory. This Note utilizes political trials as a foil to criminal trials to identify the ways that criminal trials succeed (and fail) to produce collective memory. Several features of the criminal trial— namely, the trial’s unique narrative form, constituent storytellers, capacity to capture the gravity of the offense, and jury—add to society’s shared narrative of …

Journal Staff

Duke Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Carrots, Sticks, And Space Patents, Kyle Howarth

Duke Law Journal

Patents are essential for promoting scientific progress and innovation. However, the current framework for patents in outer space unduly disincentivizes U.S. patentees from obtaining patents. Importantly, these disincentives may hinder innovation for vital technologies relating to space. This Note explains why international collaboration is necessary to solve this problem and how the United States can incentivize international support for a space patent regime. Specifically, this Note advocates a patent regime consisting of a single set of substantive and procedural patent laws governing the distinct territory of space. First, Part I provides a background on current patent laws in space. Next, …

Cryptocurrency, Legibility, And Taxation, Amanda Parsons

Duke Law Journal Online

In Jarrett v. United States, a taxpayer in Tennessee is arguing that staking cryptocurrency did not result in him earning “income” under federal income tax law. This case illustrates the fundamental challenge that cryptocurrency and blockchain technology present for tax law. Wealth creation in the crypto space is not readily legible to the state. This absence of legibility threatens tax law’s reliance on placing economic activities into categories to determine how they should be taxed. Furthermore, this case highlights the harms Congress and Treasury are risking by not taking action on cryptocurrency taxation. The uncertainty and lack of guidance …

Agents Of Inequality: Common Ownership And The Decline Of The American Worker, Zohar Goshen, Doron Levit

Duke Law Journal

The last forty years have seen two major economic trends: wages have stalled despite rising productivity, and institutional investors have replaced retail shareholders as the predominant owners of the U.S. equity markets. A few powerful institutional investors—dubbed common owners—now hold large stakes in most U.S. corporations. And in no coincidence, when U.S. workers acquired this new set of bosses, their wages stopped growing while shareholder returns increased. This Article explains how common owners shift wealth from labor to capital, thereby exacerbating income inequality.

Powerful institutional investors pushing public corporations en masse to adopt strong corporate governance has an inherent, painful …

Settling Old Scores: Proposing Targeted Regulation To Mitigate The Problem Of Looted Antiquities, Mary Genevieve Sanner

Duke Law Journal

Antiquities looting rips artifacts out of their historical and archaeological context. It deprives countries of their cultural property, and instead allows those artifacts to be sold or auctioned to wealthy individuals on the private market. Current enforcement mechanisms provide inadequate deterrence to the secondary market for these antiquities. A recent amendment to the Bank Secrecy Act could provide a solution. However, regulations enacted pursuant to that amendment should not simply transpose requirements and red flags from the financial context to the art context. They should look beyond concerns that looting might be used to fund terrorism and should instead consider …

The Trouble With Court-Packing, Neil S. Siegel

Duke Law Journal

Wide-ranging public discussion of U.S. Supreme Court reform implicates fundamental questions of constitutional policy, norms, and law. This Article focuses on the reform proposal that poses the greatest threat to judicial legitimacy and independence: Court-packing. This Article contends that there has likely been a constitutional convention against Court-packing for a long time now, although it is uncertain whether the convention continues to exist given Senate conduct since 2016. This Article also maintains that Court-packing is not as free from constitutional difficulty as the conventional wisdom holds, even if the arguments for its constitutionality are stronger on balance. Most importantly, this …

Journal Staff

Duke Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Climate Transition Relief: Federal Buyouts For Underwater Homes, Stephanie M. Stern

Duke Law Journal

As climate change causes unprecedented dislocation from flooding and sea-level rise, a new legal regime for climate retreat (i.e., shifting human settlement from severe climate risk zones) is developing. Buyout laws, such as FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, fund government acquisitions of severely flood-impacted homes, enabling owners to relocate, and require localities to rezone acquired land as open space. Despite the growing interest in flood buyouts as a tool for climate change adaptation, there has been little attention by policymakers or scholars to the capacity of buyouts to incentivize “buy ins” to flood zones by subsidizing flood risk-taking—a problematic irony …

Race In The United States: A View From Outer Space, Stephen W. Smith, Géraldine Faes-Smith

Law and Contemporary Problems

No abstract provided.

Estoppel By Nonviolence, Darrell A.H. Miller

Law and Contemporary Problems

No abstract provided.

Imagining The United States: Reflections From Constitutional Law, H. Jefferson Powell

Law and Contemporary Problems

No abstract provided.

Journal Staff

Law and Contemporary Problems

No abstract provided.

Living In The Shadow Of American Racism, James E. Coleman Jr.

Law and Contemporary Problems

No abstract provided.

Foreword: Two Americas, Doriane Lambelet Coleman

Law and Contemporary Problems

No abstract provided.

The Two "Two Americas" Of Trump And Romney, Lawrence Zelenak

Law and Contemporary Problems

No abstract provided.

Unified Criminal Justice Reform, Brandon L. Garrett

Law and Contemporary Problems

No abstract provided.

Xenophobic Conspiracy Theories And The Long Roots Of January Sixth, H. Timothy Lovelace Jr.

Law and Contemporary Problems

No abstract provided.

Credit Scoring Duality, Pamela Foohey, Sara Sternberg Greene

Law and Contemporary Problems

No abstract provided.

Artificial Justice: The Quandary Of Ai In The Courtroom, Paul W. Grimm, Maura R. Grossman, Sabine Gless, Mireille Hildebrandt

Judicature International

No abstract provided.

Volume 106, Number 3 (2023)

Judicature

No abstract provided.

Viagra Did Not Work, But Michael Jordan Still Made It: Trademark Policy Toward The Translation Of Foreign Marks In China, Jyh-An Lee, Lili Yang

Duke Law & Technology Review

Most multinational enterprises (MNEs) register their original trademarks in Roman letters in China upon entering the Chinese market. However, many fail to develop and register corresponding Chinese marks because they do not understand local culture and consumers, overvalue consumers’ presumed brand loyalty, or neglect the accompanying trademark issues. This failure enables trademark squatters to register and hold the Chinese marks for ransom or local competitors to free ride on foreign marks using their Chinese translations or transliterations. This Article first introduces the complexity of translating a foreign mark into Chinese, which concerns complex linguistic, cultural, and business challenges. Based on …

Space And Existential Risk: The Need For Global Coordination And Caution In Space Development, Chase Hamilton

Duke Law & Technology Review

This Article examines urgent risks resulting from outer space activities under the current space law regime. Emerging literature alarmingly predicts that the risk of a catastrophe that ends the human species this century is approximately 10–25%. Continued space development may increase, rather than decrease, overall existential risk due in part to crucial and identifiable market failures. Addressing these shortcomings should take priority over the competing commercial, scientific, and geopolitical interests that currently dominate in space policy. Sensible changes, including shifting space into a closed-access commons as envisioned by the 1979 Moon Treaty, may help in achieving existential security.

Volume 106, Number 2 (2022)

Judicature

No abstract provided.

Hon. Joel Toomey, Gerald B. Tjoflat

Special Collections

A discussion with Judge Tjoflat regarding supervising the operation of the Southern District of Florida and districts generally; and building the current courthouse.

Rev. Canon Beth Tjoflat, Gerald B. Tjoflat

Special Collections

A discussion with Judge Tjoflat regarding his involvement with the Episcopal Church, especially in the Diocese of Florida

Dean Michael P. Scharf, Gerald B. Tjoflat

Special Collections

A discussion with Judge Tjoflat regarding his relationships with older judges, other prominent influencers, and his time as chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit

Designing Constitutions For A Lasting Democracy, Donald L. Horowitz, Elisabeth Perham

Judicature International

No abstract provided.

A Global Comparison Of Judicial Discipline Mechanisms, Zhuozhen Duan

Judicature International

No abstract provided.