Law Commons^™

Assessing The Viability Of Implicit Bias Evidence In Discrimination Cases: An Analysis Of The Most Significant Federal Cases, Anthony Kakoyannis

Florida Law Review

The theory of implicit bias occupies a rapidly growing field of scientific research and legal scholarship. With the advent of tools measuring individuals’ subconscious biases toward people of other races, genders, ages, national origins, religions, and sexual orientations, scholars have rushed to explore the ways in which these biases might affect decision-making and produce broad societal consequences.

The question that remains unanswered for scholars, attorneys, and judges is whether evidence of implicit bias and its effects can or should be used in legal proceedings. Although the study of implicit bias dates back several decades, only recently have judicial opinions begun …

The Epidemic Of Higher Levels Of Depression And Anxiety In Each Successive Generation Of Youth: Proposed Causes, Detrimental Effects, And The Introduction Of Positive Psychology In The Classroom, Rosemarie Parasole

Florida Law Review

The past few decades have witnessed a major increase in each successive generation of youth reporting higher levels of mental illness. The detrimental effects of mental disorders, including depression and anxiety, demand a solution that addresses a change in thinking and wellbeing among youth. Research illustrates the substantial impact the teachings of positive psychology have on developing minds. Additionally, positive psychology addresses and attempts to remedy many of the proposed factors contributing to youth depression and anxiety. This Note calls for legislation to introduce positive psychology classes on a statewide level within the K–12 curriculum in all Florida public schools.

Zombie Patents And Zombie Companies With Patents, Xuan-Thao Nguyen

Florida Law Review

No abstract provided.

Redefining “Particularly Serious Crimes” In Refugee Law, Mary Holper

Florida Law Review

Refugees are not protected from deportation if they have been convicted of a “particularly serious crime” (PSC) which renders them a danger to the community. This raises questions about the meaning of “particularly serious” and “danger to the community.” The Board of Immigration Appeals, Attorney General, and Congress have interpreted PSC quite broadly, leaving many refugees vulnerable to deportation without any consideration of the risk of persecution in their cases. This trend is disturbing as a matter of refugee law, but it is even more disturbing because it demonstrates how certain criminal law trends have played out in immigration law. …

Congress And Commercial Trusts: Dealing With Diversity Jurisdiction Post-Americold, S.I. Strong

Florida Law Review

Commercial trusts are one of the United States’ most important types of business organizations, holding trillions of dollars of assets and operating nationally and internationally as a “mirror image” of the corporation. However, commercial trusts remain underappreciated and undertheorized in comparison to corporations, often as a result of the popular but mistaken belief that commercial trusts are analogous to traditional intergenerational trusts or that corporations reflect the primary or paradigmatic form of business association.

The treatment of commercial trusts reached its nadir in early 2016, when the U.S. Supreme Court held in Americold Realty Trust v. ConAgra Foods, Inc. that …

For Whom The Statute Tolls? Not Even The Sacred Heart: Florida Class Action Jurisdiction And The Need For Savings Statute To Toll The Limitations Period, Laura Liles

Florida Law Review

Class actions are common litigation tools that plaintiffs use to efficiently adjudicate their rights. However, with the passage of the Class Action Fairness Act and the Florida Capacity to Sue statute, class plaintiffs could very quickly find their claims traveling from state to federal court, or simply being dismissed for lack of jurisdiction if originally filed in federal court. While this may not initially suggest an issue, CAFA and the Florida Capacity to Sue statute are creating tremendous traffic in federal courts. When considered with Florida’s strict application of the statute of limitations for class actions, a plaintiff’s limitations period …

Breach Of Faith: A Lack Of Policy For Responding To Data Breaches And What The Government Should Do About It, Jared Burns

Florida Law Review

One data breach in the summer of 2015 against the United States government cost taxpayers more than $350 million. Since 2005, the U.S. government has lost more than 183 million personnel records and countless files containing sensitive information. Despite all of this, the government has failed to create a policy for responding to data breaches. As proof of a lack of any clear policy, this Note analyzes two recent breaches against the government and explains how the responses, or lack thereof, are at opposite ends of the response continuum.

This Note creates a policy for government response to data breaches. …

The Song Remains The Same: What Cyberlaw Might Teach The Next Internet Economy, Kevin Werbach

Florida Law Review

The next stage of the digital economy will involve trillions of networked devices across every industry and sphere of human activity: The Internet of the World. Early manifestations of this evolution through on-demand services such as Uber and Airbnb raise a host of serious legal questions. The stage seems set for a decisive battle between regulation and innovation. Yet this perception is mistaken. In the end, the emerging businesses will welcome government engagement, and regulatory actors will accept creative solutions to achieve their goals. Why expect such a resolution? Because the same story played out twenty years ago, in the …

The Right To Counsel But Not The Presence Of Counsel: A Survey Of State Criminal Procedures For Pre-Trial Release, John P. Gross

Florida Law Review

There is a widely-held belief that the state provides counsel to indigent criminal defendants at their initial appearance in state court. However, the majority of states do not provide counsel to indigent defendants at their initial appearance when a judicial officer determines conditions of pretrial release. State criminal procedure codes fail to provide the same procedural protections that defendants have in federal court. Indeed, states systems are characterized by predictive determinations regarding guilt, an overemphasis on the potential dangerousness of defendants, a lack of adequate pretrial services, and continued reliance on financial securities.

The U.S. Supreme Court has done little …

Privacy, Mass Intrusion And The Modern Data Breach, Jon L. Mills, Kelsey Harclerode

Florida Law Review

Massive data breaches have practically become a daily occurrence. These breaches reveal intrusive private information about individuals, as well as priceless corporate secrets. Ashley Madison’s breach ruined lives and resulted in suicides. The HSBC breach, accomplished by one of their own, revealed valuable commercial information about the bank and personal information about HSBC customers. The employee responsible for the breach has since been convicted of aggravated personal espionage, while third-party news outlets have been free to republish the hacked information.

Some information disclosed in data breaches can serve a public purpose. The Snowden disclosures, for example, revealed sensitive government information …

Policing, Technology, And Doctrinal Assists, Bennett Capers

Florida Law Review

Sounding the alarm about technology, policing, and privacy has become an almost daily occurrence. We are told that the government’s use of technology as a surveillance tool is an “insidious assault on our freedom.” That it is “nearly impossible to live today without generating thousands of records about what we watch, read, buy and do—and the government has access to them.” The message is clear. Big Brother is watching. And we should be afraid.

But the police use of technology, or what this Article terms “techno-policing,” does not have to be dystopian. This Article challenges conventional thinking and offers an …

Contextualizing The Free Exercise Of Religion, Adam Lamparello

Florida Law Review

The level of protection afforded to an individual’s First Amendment right to freely exercise religion should depend upon the context within which it is exercised. Put differently, an individual’s right to religious liberty should be balanced against other individuals’ right to equal protection of the law, and the broader societal interest in protecting individuals from invidious discrimination. This Article proposes a multifactor test that fully protects the right to freely exercise one’s religion while simultaneously safeguarding equal protection and antidiscrimination guarantees. Specifically, the level of protection afforded to a free exercise claim should depend, among other things, on whether it …

A “Procedural Nightmare”: Dueling Courts And The Application Of The First-Filed Rule, Andrew Fuller

Florida Law Review

Pretend that Party A sues Party B in Court 1. Instead of countersuing, however, B then sues A in Court 2. The problem this Note examines is whether Court 1 may enjoin B from continuing to litigate in Court 2 if Court 2 has already declined to stay the case or transfer it to Court 1. This question has sharply divided the U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal. How the issue is resolved will have serious consequences for high-stakes litigation in the United States. If one district court may overrule a court of coordinate rank, strategically sophisticated parties might file suits …

Rational Basis Is The Only Rational Solution: Resolving Foreign Commerce Clause Confusion, Justin Senior

Florida Law Review

Congress enacted the PROTECT Act in 2003 to curtail the sexual abuse of children by U.S. citizens abroad. While the Act has not received much attention from scholars or courts, defendants in court consistently challenge its constitutionality. Congress maintains that it has the Foreign Commerce Clause power to prohibit the illicit sex activity in question. However, the Foreign Commerce Clause, unlike its Interstate and Indian Commerce Clause brethren, has received very little attention. The Supreme Court has rarely—and not at all recently—discussed the Foreign Commerce Clause; and its lack of guidance in this arena has led to a recently widened …

Fraudulent Aggregation: The Effect Of Daimler And Walden On Mass Litigation, Jeff Lingwall, Chris Wray

Florida Law Review

This Article examines the effect of the U.S. Supreme Court’s jurisdictional tightening in Daimler and Walden on mass litigation. This Article shows how the Supreme Court’s changes to general and specific jurisdiction, considered together, end the practice of tactically allocating non-diverse plaintiffs across state lines to defeat diversity jurisdiction in nationwide litigation, a doctrine this Article terms fraudulent aggregation. This Article places the doctrine of fraudulent aggregation in the context of fraudulent joinder, the emerging doctrine of fraudulent misjoinder, and other attempts to avoid federal court jurisdiction through artful pleading. Examples from recent products liability litigation show both the application …

Byte Marks: Making Sense Of New F.R.C.P. 37(E), Charles Yablon

Florida Law Review

New FRCP 37(e) limits severe, case ending sanctions for lost electronically stored information (ESI) to situations where a party acted with “intent to deprive” other parties of the use of that information. But it makes no change in existing preservation duties and never explains how “intent” is to be determined for the corporation and other entities likely to be parties in such litigation. The question is—does this Rule make any sense? This Essay seeks to make sense of Rule 37(e) in terms of its language, the stated goals of its drafters, and its role in the regulation of current litigation …

Selective Disclosure And Insider Trading, Michael Guttentag

Florida Law Review

Determining when the selective disclosure of material nonpublic information should trigger insider trading liability is a deeply problematic aspect of insider trading doctrine.

The current rule is that a selective disclosure can only trigger insider trading liability if “the insider [making the selective disclosure] personally will benefit, directly or indirectly, from his disclosure.” Dirks v. SEC introduced this “personal benefit” test in 1983 to balance four competing rationales for determining when a tip should trigger insider trading liability. Two developments since Dirks have made problems with this personal benefit test insurmountable. First, the SEC’s enactment of Regulation Fair Disclosure in …

Cognitively Impaired Human, Intelligent Animals, And Legal Personhood, Richard Cupp

Florida Law Review

This Article analyzes whether courts should grant legal personhood to intelligent animal species, such as chimpanzees, with a particular focus on comparisons made to cognitively impaired humans whom the law recognizes as legal persons even though they may have less practical autonomy than intelligent animals. Granting legal personhood would allow human representatives to initiate some legal actions with the animals as direct parties to the litigation, as the law presently allows for humans with cognitive impairments that leave them incapable of representing their own interests. For example, a human asserting to act on behalf of an intelligent animal might seek …

Governance Of Steel And Kryptonite Politics In Contemporary Public Education Reform, James Liebman, Elizabeth Cruikshank

Florida Law Review

Entrenched bureaucracies and special-interest politics hamper public education in the United States. In response, school districts and states have recently adopted or promoted reforms designed to release schools from bureaucratic control and empower them to meet strengthened outcome standards. Despite promising results, the reforms have been widely criticized, including by the educationally disadvantaged families they most appear to help.

To explain this paradox, this Article first considers the governance alternatives to bureaucracy that the education reforms adopt. It concludes that the reforms do not adopt the most commonly cited alternatives to bureaucracy—marketization, managerialism, or professionalism/craft— and that none of those …

Marijuana Agriculture Law: Regulation At The Root Of An Industry, Ryan Stoa

Florida Law Review

Marijuana legalization is sweeping the nation. Recreational marijuana use is legal in eight states. Medical marijuana use is legal in thirteen states. Only three states maintain an absolute criminal prohibition on marijuana use. Many of these legalization initiatives propose to regulate marijuana in a manner similar to alcohol, and many titles are variations of the “Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol Act.” For political and public health reasons the analogy makes sense, but it also reveals a regulatory blind spot. States may be using alcohol as a model for regulating the distribution, retail, and consumption of marijuana, but marijuana is much more …

Double-Tap Warfare: Should President Obama Be Investigated For War Crimes?, Samuel Alexander

Florida Law Review

A “double-tap” drone strike involves bombing a target, waiting a period of five to twenty minutes, often during which first responders arrive, and then bombing the target a second or even third time. This Note argues that such attacks, by virtue of their indiscriminate nature, are likely serious violations of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, which prohibits targeting civilians, the wounded, or those placed hors de combat. Thus, such attacks are likely war crimes under international law and under the War Crimes Act of 1996, a U.S. law that criminalizes carrying out, or ordering to be …

A Man’S Home Is His Castle, But It Has A Secret Dungeon: Domestic Violence Victims Need An Amendment To Florida’S All-Party Consent Law, David K. Warren

Florida Law Review

Domestic violence is an epidemic that is occurring at alarming rates throughout the state of Florida and across the nation. Much of that abuse occurs behind closed doors inside the home where there are no witnesses. Because Florida law does not allow a person to record communications without the consent of everyone else involved, victims are forced to rely on uncorroborated verbal accusations when they report their abuse. Unfortunately, it is difficult to prosecute these cases because they turn into credibility contests where the abuser often has an unfair advantage and has learned how to manipulate the system. If the …

Black Box Tinkering: Beyond Disclosure In Algorithmic Enforcement, Maayan Perel, Niva Elkin-Koren

Florida Law Review

The pervasive growth of algorithmic enforcement magnifies current debates regarding the virtues of transparency. Using codes to conduct robust online enforcement not only amplifies the settled problem of magnitude, or “too-much-information,” often associated with present- day disclosures, but it also imposes practical difficulties on relying on transparency as an adequate check for algorithmic enforcement. Algorithms are non-transparent by nature; their decision-making criteria are concealed behind a veil of code that we cannot easily read and comprehend. Additionally, these algorithms are dynamic in their ability to evolve according to different data patterns. This further makes them unpredictable. Moreover, algorithms that enforce …

Counterspeech, Cosby, And Libel Law: Some Lessons About “Pure Opinion” & Resuscitating The Self-Defense Privilege, Clay Calvert

Florida Law Review

Using the recent federal district court opinions in Hill v. Cosby and Green v. Cosby as analytical springboards, this timely Article explores problems with the concept of pure opinion in libel law. Specifically, Hill and Green pivoted on the same allegedly defamatory statement attorney Martin Singer made on behalf of comedian Bill Cosby, yet the judges involved reached opposite conclusions regarding whether it was protected as pure opinion. Furthermore, this Article analyzes notions of counterspeech and the conditional self-defense privilege in libel law in arguing for shielding Singer’s statement from liability. Although the self- defense privilege was flatly rejected in …

The Fresh Start Canon, Jonathon S. Byington

Florida Law Review

A primary policy of bankruptcy law is to give consumer debtors a “fresh start” by discharging their debt. A rival policy is that the discharge of debt is a selectively conferred privilege that is not granted in some situations. For example, society is unwilling to pardon debt related to embezzlement or a domestic-support obligation. This “discharge restrictions” policy is manifested in part by the Bankruptcy Code’s exceptions to discharge. The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized the tension between the fresh start and discharge restriction policies. It has sought to achieve a fair balance between these policies by applying a …

Judging Implicit Bias: A National Empirical Study Of Judicial Stereotypes, Justin D. Levinson, Mark W. Bennett, Koichi Hioki

Florida Law Review

American judges, and especially lifetime-appointed federal judges, are often revered as the pinnacle of objectivity, possessing a deep commitment to fairness, and driven to seek justice as they interpret federal laws and the U.S. Constitution. As these judges struggle with some of the great challenges of the modern legal world, empirical scholars must seek to fully understand the role of implicit bias in judicial decision-making. Research from the field of implicit social cognition has long documented negative implicit biases towards a wide range of group members, some of whom may well be harmed in various ways across the legal system. …

Undignified: The Supreme Court, Racial Justice, And Dignity Claims, Darren Lenard Hutchinson

Florida Law Review

The Supreme Court has interpreted the Equal Protection Clause as a formal equality mandate. In response, legal scholars have advocated alternative conceptions of equality, such as antisubordination theory, that interpret equal protection in more substantive terms. Antisubordination theory would consider the social context in which race-based policies emerge and recognize material distinctions between policies intended to oppress racial minorities and those designed to ameliorate past and current racism. Antisubordination theory would also closely scrutinize facially neutral state action that systemically disadvantages vulnerable social groups. The Court has largely ignored these reform proposals. Modern Supreme Court rulings, however, have invoked the …

I Am Cait, But It's None Of Your Business: The Problem Of Invasive Transgender Policies And A Fourth Amendment Solution, Elise Holtzman

Florida Law Review

Transgender people constitute a distinct minority with unique legal battles. There is a widespread societal misunderstanding of what it means to be transgender that results in treating the transgender community the same as their lesbian, gay, and members of bisexual counterparts. This misunderstanding is even more prevalent in the legal context, resulting in a serious failure of courts to protect transgender individuals’ constitutional rights. This Note explores why the current legal treatment of transgender rights is inadequate. This Note then argues that the Fourth Amendment right to privacy should be construed outside of the criminal context and should be utilized …

Who Watches This Stuff?: Videos Depicting Actual Murder And The Need For A Federal Criminal Murder-Video Statute, Musa K. Farmand Jr.

Florida Law Review

Murder videos are video recordings that depict the intentional, unlawful killing of one human being by another. Generally, due to their obscene nature, murder videos are absent from mainstream media. However, in the wake of Vester Lee Flanagan II's filmed murders of reporter Allison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward on live television, it is perhaps only a matter of time before murder videos become an acceptable form of entertainment. Further, Americans should be wary of potential "copycat" perpetrators and their thirst for infamy via immortalization on the Internet, as the free dissemination of murder videos provide extra incentive to commit …

Voices On Innocence, Lucian E. Dervan, Richard A. Leo, Meghan J. Ryan, Valena E. Beety

Florida Law Review

In the summer of 2015, experts gathered from around the country to sit together and discuss one of the most pressing and important issues facing the American criminal justice system—innocence. Innocence is an issue that pervades various areas of research and influences numerous topics of discussion. What does innocence mean, particularly in a system that differentiates between innocence and acquittal at sentencing? What is the impact of innocence during plea bargaining? How should society respond to the growing number of exonerations? What forces lead to the incarceration of innocents? Has an innocent person been put to death and, if so, …