Law Commons^™

Book Review: Jordan Carson, American Exceptionalism As Religion: Postmodern Discontent., Lucy Williams

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Blasting Reproach And All-Pervading Light: Frederick Douglass’S Aspirational American Exceptionalism, Lucy Williams

Faculty Scholarship

Some scholars critique American exceptionalism as a proud, uncritical orientation. In this article, however, I argue that Frederick Douglass, an outspoken social critic, qualifies as an American exceptionalist thinker. I first identify and theorize two modes of exceptionalist rhetoric: accomplished exceptionalism, which is self-celebratory and largely uncritical, and aspirational exceptionalism, which is self-critical and reflective. I then provide a close reading of “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July” to show how Douglass employs aspirational rhetorical techniques. Finally, I discuss the benefits of reading Douglass as an exceptionalist thinker and suggest that his aspirational rhetoric activates reflective and …

Transformative Use In Software, Clark D. Asay

Faculty Scholarship

Fair use is copyright law’s most important defense against claims of copyright infringement. It provides courts with an equitable tool for allowing parties to use the copyrighted materials of others without liability when doing so facilitates copyright’s constitutional purpose of promoting the “progress of Science and the useful Arts.”

When analyzing fair use, modern courts place great emphasis on whether the purportedly fair use involves a “transformative use” of the copyrighted materials. In what some are calling the most important software copyright case in decades, a jury recently handed Google a victory by concluding that Google’s reuse of some of …

Software's Copyright Anticommons, Clark D. Asay

Faculty Scholarship

Scholars have long assessed “anticommons” problems in creative and innovative environments. An anticommons develops when an asset has numerous rights holders, each of which has a right to prevent use of the asset, but none of which has a right to use the asset without authorization from the other rights holders. Hence, when any one of those rights holders uses its rights in ways that inhibit use of the common asset, an anticommons may result.

In the software world, scholars have long argued that anticommons problems arise, if at all, because of patent rights. Copyright, on the other hand, has …

Patent Pacifism, Clark D. Asay

Faculty Scholarship

Over the last decade, much of the patent law literature has focused on the problem of “patent trolls,” or patent owners who don’t make products, but sue others that do. The basic complaint against these types of entities is that they impose a tax on innovation without providing offsetting societal benefits. Furthermore, their patent assertions have been on the rise, with a significant percentage of patent suits now attributable to them. In short, the troll phenomenon suggests a problem of excessive patent assertions.

But despite the importance of the troll phenomenon, the fact remains that most patents are never asserted, …

Two Cheers For The Foreign Tax Credit, Even In The Beps Era, J. Clifton Fleming Jr., Robert J. Peroni, Stephen E. Shay

Faculty Scholarship

Reform of the U.S. international income taxation system has been a hotly debated topic for many years. The principal competing alternatives are a territorial or exemption system and a worldwide system. For reasons summarized in this article, we favor worldwide taxation if it is real worldwide taxation – i.e., a non-deferred U.S. tax is imposed on all foreign income of U.S. residents at the time the income in earned. This approach is not acceptable, however, unless the resulting double taxation is alleviated. The longstanding U.S. approach for handling the international double taxation problem is a foreign tax credit limited to …

The Hostile Poison Pill, A. Christine Hurt

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

R&D Tax Incentives--Growth Panacea Or Budget Trojan Horse?, Stephen E. Shay, J. Clifton Fleming Jr., Robert J. Peroni

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Family Law And Entrepreneurial Action, D. Gordon Smith

Faculty Scholarship

In "The Contractual Foundation of Family-Business Law," Benjamin Means aspires to lay the groundwork for a law of family businesses. In this brief response essay, I suggest that a workable family-business law along the lines suggested by Means is consistent with an overarching policy in the United States of promoting entrepreneurial action, and I evaluate the proposal against this policy goal, with particular attention to Means’s arguments in favor of “family-business defaults” and his concern over the potentially disruptive role of fiduciary law.

Intellectual Property Law Hybridization, Clark D. Asay

Faculty Scholarship

Traditionally, patent and copyright laws have been viewed as separate bodies of law with distinct utilitarian goals. The conventional wisdom holds that patent law aims to incentivize the production of inventive ideas, while copyright focuses on protecting the original expression of ideas, but not the underlying ideas themselves. This customary divide between patent and copyright laws finds some support in the Constitution’s Intellectual Property Clause, and Congress, courts, and scholars have largely perpetuated it in enacting, interpreting, and analyzing copyright and patent laws over time.

In this Article, I argue that it is time to partially breach this traditional divide. …

Mapping Citizenship: Status, Membership, And The Path In Between, D. Carolina Nuñez

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Plenary Power, Political Questions, And Sovereignty In Indian Affairs, Michalyn Steele

Faculty Scholarship

A generation of Indian law scholars has roundly, and rightly, criticized the Supreme Court’s invocation of the political question doctrine to deprive tribes of meaningful judicial review when Congress has acted to the detriment of tribes. Similarly, many Indian law scholars view the plenary power doctrine — that Congress has expansive, virtually unlimited authority to regulate tribes — as a tool that fosters and formalizes the legal oppression of Indian people by an unchecked Federal government. The way courts have applied these doctrines in tandem has frequently left tribes without meaningful judicial recourse against breaches of the federal trust responsibility …

Pricing Disintermediation: Crowdfunding And Online Auction Ipos, A. Christine Hurt

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Designing A 21st Century Corporate Tax – An Advance U.S. Minimum Tax On Foreign Income And Other Measures To Protect The Base, Stephen E. Shay, J. Clifton Fleming Jr., Robert J. Peroni

Faculty Scholarship

The 21st Century has seen unprecedented levels of corporate tax aggressiveness and avoidance. This article continues our exploration of second best international tax reforms that would protect the U.S. corporate tax base and have some likelihood of adoption. In this case, we consider how a U.S. minimum tax on foreign income earned by a controlled foreign corporation should be designed to protect the United States against erosion of its corporate income tax base and to combat tax competition by low-tax intermediary countries. In the authors’ view, a minimum tax should be an interim levy that preserves the residual U.S. tax …

The Psychology Of Patent Protection, Stephanie Plamondon Bair

Faculty Scholarship

This Article offers the first comprehensive assessment of the major justifications for our patent system using a behavioral psychology framework. Applying insights from the behavioral literature that I argue more accurately account for the realities of human action than previous analytical tools, I critically evaluate each of the major justifications for patents — incentive theory, disclosure theory, prospect theory, commercialization theory, patent racing theory, and non-utilitarian theories. I ask whether our current patent system is an effective regime for meeting the stated goals of these accounts. When the answer to this question is no, I again turn to the behavioral …

Copyright's Technological Interdependencies, Clark D. Asay

Faculty Scholarship

Copyright was initially conceptualized as a means to free creative parties from dependency on public and private patrons such as monarchs, churches, and well-to-do private citizens. By achieving independence for creative parties, the theory ran, copyright led to greater production of a more diverse set of creative works.

But this lingering conception of copyright is both inaccurate and harmful. It is inaccurate because, in today’s world, creative parties are increasingly dependent upon “Technological Patronage” from the likes of Google, Amazon, Apple, and others. Thus, rather than being alternatives or adversaries, copyright and Technological Patronage are increasingly interdependent in facilitating both …

Future War And The War Powers Resolution, Eric Talbot Jensen

Faculty Scholarship

Since its passage in 1973 over the veto of then-President Nixon, the War Powers Resolution (WPR) has been laden with controversy. Labeled as everything from ineffective to unconstitutional, the WPR has generally failed in its design to require notification and consultation to Congress by the President. Despite numerous proposals to amend the WPR, it continues to languish in the twilight of Executive war powers, and its future is bleak. With emerging technologies such as drones, cyber tools, nanotechnology, and genomics, the ineffectiveness of the WPR will prove even more profound. The WPR’s reliance on “armed forces” and “hostilities” as triggers …

Cyber Sovereignty: The Way Ahead, Eric Talbot Jensen

Faculty Scholarship

The last few years are full of reports of cyber incidents, some of which have caused significant damage. Each of these cyber events raise important questions about the role and responsibility of States with respect to cyber incidents. The answer to these questions revolves in large part around the international law doctrine of sovereignty. The extent to which nations exercise sovereignty over cyberspace and cyber infrastructure will provide key answers to how much control States must exercise and how much responsibility States must accept for harmful cyber activities when they fail to adequately do so. This article argues that States …

The Duty To Manage Risk, A. Christine Hurt

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Press Definition And The Religion Analogy, Ronnell Andersen Jones

Faculty Scholarship

n a Harvard Law Review Forum response to Professor Sonja West's symposium article, "Press Exceptionalism," Professor RonNell Andersen Jones critiques Professor West's effort to define "the press" for purposes of Press Clause exceptions and addresses the weaknesses of Professor West's analogy to Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School v. EEOC in drawing these definitional lines. The response highlights distinctions between Press Clause and Religion Clause jurisprudence and urges a more functional approach to press definition.

Fiduciary Discretion, D. Gordon Smith, Jordan C. Lee

Faculty Scholarship

Discretion is an important feature of all contractual relationships. In this Article, we rely on incomplete contract theory to motivate our study of discretion, with particular attention to fiduciary relationships. We make two contributions to the substantial literature on fiduciary law. First, we describe the role of fiduciary law as “boundary enforcement,” and we urge courts to honor the appropriate exercise of discretion by fiduciaries, even when the beneficiary or the judge might perceive a preferable action after the fact. Second, we answer the question, how should a court define the boundaries of fiduciary discretion? We observe that courts often …

The Dangers Of Press Clause Dicta, Ronnell Andersen Jones

Faculty Scholarship

The United States Supreme Court has engaged in an unusual pattern of excessive dicta in cases involving the press. Indeed, a close examination of such cases reveals that it is one of the most consistent, defining characteristics of the U.S. Supreme Court’s media law jurisprudence in the last half century. The Court’s opinions in cases involving the media, while almost uniformly reaching conclusions based on other grounds, regularly include language about the constitutional or democratic character, duty, value, or role of the press — language that could be, but ultimately is not, significant to the constitutional conclusion reached. Although scholars …

What The Supreme Court Thinks Of The Press And Why It Matters, Ronnell Andersen Jones

Faculty Scholarship

Over the last fifty years, in cases involving the institutional press, the United States Supreme Court has offered characterizations of the purpose, duty, role, and value of the press in a democracy. An examination of the tone and quality of these characterizations over time suggests a downward trend, with largely favorable and praising characterizations of the press devolving into characterizations that are more distrusting and disparaging.

This Essay explores this trend, setting forth evidence of the Court’s changing view of the media—from the effusively complimentary depictions of the media during the Glory Days of the 1960s and 1970s to the …

Beyond One Voice, David H. Moore

Faculty Scholarship

The one-voice doctrine, a mainstay of U.S. foreign relations jurisprudence, maintains that in its external relations the United States must be able to speak with one voice. The doctrine has been used to answer critical questions about the foreign affairs powers of the President, Congress, the courts, and U.S. states. Notwithstanding its prominence, the one-voice doctrine has received relatively little sustained attention. This Article offers the first comprehensive assessment of the doctrine. The assessment proves fatal.

Despite broad use and value in certain contexts, the one-voice doctrine is fundamentally flawed. The doctrine not only is used to address divergent questions …

Ex-Post Incentives And Ip In Garcia V. Google And Beyond, Clark D. Asay

Faculty Scholarship

In this Essay, I articulate a theory for why the outcome in the Ninth Circuit's recent Garcia v. Google copyright decision is wrong. I apply the same theory to explain the problem with patent assertion entities, more colloquially known as patent trolls.

Comparative Institutional Competency And Sovereignty In Indian Affairs, Michalyn Steele

Faculty Scholarship

While vigorous debate surrounds the proper scope and ambit of inherent tribal authority, there remains a critical antecedent question: whether Congress or the courts are ultimately best situated to define the contours of inherent tribal authority. In February 2013, Congress enacted controversial tribal jurisdiction provisions as part of the Violence Against Women Act reauthorization recognizing and affirming inherent tribal authority to prosecute all persons, including non-Indian offenders, for crimes of domestic violence in Indian country. This assertion by Congress of its authority to set the bounds of tribal inherent authority -- beyond where the United States Supreme Court has held …

Cross, Crucifix, Culture: An Approach To The Constitutional Meaning Of Confessional Symbols, Frederick Mark Gedicks, Pasquale Annicchino

Faculty Scholarship

In the United States and Europe the constitutionality of government displays of confessional symbols depends on whether the symbols also have nonconfessional secular meaning (in the U.S.) or whether the confessional meaning is at least absent (in Europe). Yet both the United States Supreme Court (USSCt) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) lack a workable approach to determining whether secular meaning is present or confessional meaning absent.

The problem is that the government can nearly always articulate a possible secular meaning for the confessional symbols that it uses, or argue that the confessional meaning is passive and ineffective. …

Invisible Women: Why An Exemption For Hobby Lobby Would Violate The Establishment Clause, Frederick Mark Gedicks, Andrew Koppelman

Faculty Scholarship

Can an employer make his employees foot the bill for his religious beliefs? Merely to ask this question is to answer it. “Religious liberty” does not and cannot include the right to impose the costs of observing one's religion on someone else. Indeed, the Supreme Court has consistently interpreted the Free Exercise Clause, the Establishment Clause, and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to forbid permissive accommodations of religion in the for-profit workplace when they impose significant burdens on identifiable and discrete third parties.

In Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., however, an employer is claiming that …

Religion, Meaning, Truth, Life, Frederick Mark Gedicks

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Rfra Exemptions From The Contraception Mandate: An Unconstitutional Accommodation Of Religion, Frederick Mark Gedicks, Rebecca G. Van Tassell

Faculty Scholarship

Litigation surrounding use of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to exempt employers from the Affordable Care Act’s “contraception mandate” is moving steadily towards resolution in the U.S. Supreme Court. Both opponents and supporters of the mandate, however, have overlooked the Establishment Clause limits on such exemptions.

The heated religious-liberty rhetoric aimed at the mandate has obscured that RFRA is a “permissive” rather than “mandatory” accommodation of religion — a government concession to religious belief and practice that is not required by the Free Exercise Clause. Permissive accommodations must satisfy Establishment Clause constraints, notably the requirement that the accommodation not impose …