Law Commons^™

Environmental Law, Eleventh Circuit Survey, Travis M. Trimble

Scholarly Works

In 2007 the Eleventh Circuit interpreted the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Rapanos v. United States, regarding the federal government’s jurisdiction over waters under the Clean Water Act (“CWA”), and held that in order for federal jurisdiction to exist over a water that is not navigable in fact, the water must have a “significant nexus” with a water that is navigable in fact. Also under the CWA, the court partially reversed a granting of summary judgment to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, holding that the department had improperly excluded some types of evidence in approving Florida’s 2002 …

Culture, Sovereignty, And Hollywood: Unesco And The Future Of Trade In Cultural Products, Christopher M. Bruner

Scholarly Works

On October 20, 2005, the General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and CulturalOrganization (UNESCO) adopted a treaty - by a vote of 148-2, with 4 abstentions - that legitimates domestic legal measures aimed at the protection of local producers of cultural activities, goods and services. Opposed by the United States and Israel, the Convention represents a major diplomatic victory for Canada and France - its principal proponents - and a major blow to Hollywood and the United States, audiovisual products being among America's most lucrative exports. Both Canada and France, like many countries around the world, have long …

Kyoto Comes To Georgia: How International Environmental Initiatives Foster Sustainable Commerce In Small Town America, Peter A. Appel, T. Rick Irvin, Julie M. Mcentire, J. Chris Rabon

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This Article posits that in response to adoption of Kyoto Protocol targets by governments and multi-national corporations overseas that comprise significant portions of the global economy as well as global financial markets, businesses and state and local governments in the U.S. are also being driven by necessity to undertake sustainable commerce initiatives. Businesses in the EU and other Kyoto-compliant regions that have implemented sustainable commerce programs now require overseas vendors and suppliers-including those in the U.S.-to implement their own sustainable commerce initiatives as a condition of approved supplier status. New EU environmental regulations developed in part to meet Kyoto-specified emissions …

Public Health Law For A Brave New World; Book Review: Lawrence O. Gostin, Public Health Law: Power, Duty, Restraint, Elizabeth Weeks Leonard

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This is book review of Lawrence O. Gostin's new edition of Public Health Law: Power, Duty, Restraint (University of California Press, Berkeley, California, 2d ed., 2008). A review of a second edition of a book may be somewhat unusual as subsequent editions of already published works typically do not break new ground. But this book is different. Gostin's first edition, published in 2000, established and defined the modern field of public health law. The revised and expanded second edition emerges in the post-9/11, post-Katrina, post-Bush world. Gostin now seeks to apply public health paradigms to social problems beyond the field's …

Remixing Obviousness, Joseph S. Miller

Scholarly Works

In April 2007, the Supreme Court, for the first time in 41 years, decided a case about the basic contours of patent law's nonobviousness standard. The case, KSR, upends 25 years of Federal Circuit jurisprudence, and on a legal requirement that every patent must satisfy. In this essay, I show how KSR dismantles two predicates that have long shaped Federal Circuit nonobviousness cases - namely, the intertwined premises that hindsight-driven distortion is the gravest risk to an accurate nonobviousness requirement, and that the person of ordinary skill in the art (from whose perspective nonobviousness is judge) is singularly uncreative. In …

Changing Intellectual Property And Corporate Legal Structures To Promote The U.S. Environmental Management And Technology Systems Industry, Peter A. Appel, T. Rick Irvin

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This Article posits that for the U.S. environmental management and technology industry to enjoy success comparable to that of the biotechnology and semiconductor industries requires critical examination of current law to enable market-based and regulatory incentives, which would position U.S. industry to compete with equal strength against global competitors in global markets. This Article explains that the legal community, along with the environmental science and engineering disciplines, must guide both growth and market dominance of this industry in the global marketplace. The Article examines three areas of the law critical to the U.S. Environmental Technology Management System (EMTS) industry -- …

The Fetishization Of Independence, Usha Rodrigues

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According to conventional wisdom, a supermajority independent board of directors is the ideal corporate governance structure. Debate nevertheless continues: empirical evidence suggests that independent boards do not improve firm performance. Independence proponents respond that past studies reflect a flawed definition of independence.

Remarkably, neither side in the independence debate has looked to Delaware, the preeminent state source for corporate law. Comparing Delaware's notions of independence with those of Sarbanes-Oxley and its attendant reforms reveals two fundamentally different conceptions of independence. Sarbanes-Oxley equates independence with outsider status. An independent director is one who lacks financial ties to the corporation and is …

"I'M Sorry, I Can't Answer That": Supreme Court Confirmations, Judicial Independence, And Positive Legal Scholarship, Lori A. Ringhand

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The United States Constitution grants to the Senate the duty to provide its “advice and consent” to the appointment of Supreme Court Justices. Just how senators should exercise that duty, however, is deeply contested. Much of the dispute about the Senate's role involves the appropriate scope of questions the senators should ask, and what nominees should be expected to answer, at the confirmation hearing held by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Opponents of vigorous senatorial questioning argue that such questioning infringes on the independence of the judiciary; proponents argue that the nominees' failure to answer probing questions hinders the Senate's constitutional …