Law Commons^™

No-Injury And Piggyback Class Actions: When Product-Defect Class Actions Do Not Benefit Consumers, Philip S. Goldberg, Andrew J. Trask

University of Massachusetts Law Review

Class counsel are more frequently filing product-based class actions that, whether successful or not, offer few practical benefits to real consumers or class members. These no-benefit class actions cause the unnecessary expense of the courts’ time and resources, and they often fail to provide actual value to class members while still producing substantial attorneys’ fees. This article explores why strategic vagueness in plaintiffs’ filings and a lack of vigorous analysis by the courts have allowed no-benefit class actions to unnecessarily consume court resources. The article concludes by offering suggestions for how courts can alleviate some of this pressure, primarily by …

The Clean Water Act Section 401 Water Quality Certification Improvement Rule And Why It Deserves Chevron Deference, Joseph Retzer

Saint Louis University Law Journal

This Article reviews the history of CWA Section 401 and finds that it supports affording EPA’s newest interpretive rule Chevron deference. The CWA Section 401 Water Quality Certification Improvement Rule serves as an important case study of the doctrine which faces mounting criticisms and two cases challenging its legality in the Supreme Court at the time of this publication. Although its application delegates lawmaking authority to unelected officials who change policies with the tides of each election, this delegation has been necessary in many areas of the law due to Congress’s failure to act in recent years. Instead of simply …

Adding Wage Theft As A Qualifying Crime In The U Visa Certification, Genesis Aguirre Guerra

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

Jose Lopez1 migrated to the United States without proper documentation. After he arrived, Mr. Lopez had several consecutive jobs as a line cook in various restaurants in Reno, Nevada. He started working at Casino restaurant. One day, Mr. Lopez noticed that his paychecks had not been reflecting the overtime hours he worked. Mr. Lopez approached his employer about his pay discrepancy. His employer told Mr. Lopez that he would pay for overtime the following week. The following week came, and the employer did not pay Mr. Lopez for his overtime hours. This continued for several weeks. Mr. Lopez confronted his …

Civil Procedure—Dukes Commonality Standard—Factors That Courts Should Weigh In Employment Discrimination Class Actions—Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. V. Dukes, 564 U.S. 338 (2011), Anuj Teotia

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Certification Basis For A Fully Autonomous Uncrewed Passenger Carrying Urban Air Mobility Aircraft, Steve Price

Student Works

The Urban Air Mobility campaign has set a goal to efficiently transport passengers and cargo in urban areas of operation with autonomous aircraft. This concept of operations will require aircraft to utilize technology that currently does not have clear regulatory requirements. This report contains a comprehensive analysis and creation of a certification basis for a fully autonomous uncrewed passenger carrying rotorcraft for use in Urban Air Mobility certified under Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 27. Part 27 was first analyzed to determine the applicability of current regulations. The fully electric propulsion system and fully autonomous flight control system …

To Certify Or Not To Certify? A Proposed Graduate Course And Universal Certification For Forensic Expert Witnesses, Charolette Caron

Criminology Student Work

During a court proceeding, attorneys will oftentimes bring up evidence related to their case. Since attorneys are usually not an expert in the field of evidence that they are discussing, they will bring in an expert witness. Expert witnesses are asked “. . . to testify in court when complex or specialized knowledge, beyond that of the lay person, is needed to interpret the evidence” (Wilcox & NicDaeid, 2018, p. 100). Forensic expert witnesses and their testimony, especially, are becoming increasingly important regarding accuracy and delivery. It’s been found that juries tend to rely heavily on forensic evidence when reaching …

Federal Courts’ Recalcitrance In Refusing To Certify State Law Covid-19 Business Interruption Insurance Issues, Christopher French

Journal Articles

Over 2,000 COVID-19 business interruption insurance cases have been filed in state and federal courts the past two years with most of the cases filed in or removed to federal courts. The cases are governed by state law. Rather than certify the novel state law issues presented in the cases to the respective state supreme courts that ultimately will determine the law applicable in the cases, each of the eight federal circuit courts to issue decisions on the merits in such cases to date has done so by making an Erie guess regarding how the controlling state supreme courts would …

Certification (And) Marks – Understanding Usage And Practices Among Standards Organizations, Brad Biddle, Vigdis Bronder, Jorge L. Contreras

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

In addition to creating technical standards that describe how different products or services interoperate, many standards development organizations (SDOs) also perform testing services that are designed to ensure that products that ostensibly comply with a standard actually work together. SDOs frequently call this process “certification,” and authorize implementers that pass the testing process to use a logo or similar mark. Certification marks are a type of trademark that would seem to be tailor-made for this process. Our empirical analysis shows that SDOs use certification marks only relatively rarely, however. This dissonance is striking, providing insight into both the remarkably sophisticated …

Implementation Of Human Rights Certification As A Request For Human Rights Protection To Workers In The Fishery Industry, Tito Pramudita

"Dharmasisya” Jurnal Program Magister Hukum FHUI

The responsibility of the state is one of the important keys in the life of the state, one of which is in labor matters. In its implementation there are several records of violations of human rights in the Indonesian Sea, namely Trafficking in Persons, Forced / Slavery Labor, Child Labor, Overtime and the absence of health insurance. Research Objectives To analyze regulations in Indonesia regulating the protection of human rights for workers in the fishing industry in Indonesia and Fisheries Human Rights Certification contained in the Minister of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Regulation No. 35 of 2015 has effectively provided …

Rwu Law News: The Newsletter Of Roger Williams University School Of Law 04-2021, Michael M. Bowden, Barry Bridges, Political Roundtable

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Professor Gonzalez Is 2020 Rhode Island Lawyer Of The Year 01/11/21, Barry Bridges, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Class Certification In The U.S. Courts Of Appeals: A Longitudinal Study, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang

All Faculty Scholarship

There is a vast literature on the modern class action, but little of it is informed by systematic empirical data. Mindful both that there have been few Supreme Court class certification decisions and that they may not provide an accurate picture of class action jurisprudence, let alone class action activity, over time, we created a comprehensive data set of class certification decisions in the United States Courts of Appeals consisting of all precedential panel decisions addressing whether a class should be certified from 1966 through 2017, and of nonprecedential panel decisions from 2002 through 2017.

In Section I, through a …

Law School News: Dennis W. Nixon: Doctor Of Laws, Honoris Causa 05-09-2020, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Social Checks And Balances: A Private Fairness Doctrine, Michael P. Vandenbergh

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Essay proposes a private standards and certification system to induce media firms to provide more complete and accurate information. It argues that this new private governance system is a viable response to the channelized flow of information that is exacerbating political polarization in the United States. Specifically, this Essay proposes development of a new private fairness doctrine to replace the standard repealed by the Federal Communications Commission in 1987. A broad-based, multi-stakeholder organization could develop and implement this private fairness doctrine, and the certification process could harness market and social pressure to influence the practices of traditional and new …

(Carbon) Farming Our Way Out Of Climate Change, Alexia Brunet Marks

Publications

Numerous climate-related emergencies highlight the challenges and urgency posed by climate change: the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report, the Global Climate Action Summit in California and international student walkouts, to name a few. While the IPCC Report sent an urgent cry to reduce total emissions and to achieve specific results—45% reduction by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2050—reductions need to be combined with capturing and storing atmospheric carbon dioxide. Scientific studies have shown that an annual increase of 0.4% of carbon stored in soils would make it possible to stop the present increase in atmospheric CO2.

This …

Certification Comes Of Age: Reflections On The Past, Present And Future Of Cooperative Judicial Federalism, Kenneth F. Ripple

Journal Articles

In 1995, the American Judicature Society (AJS) undertook a comprehensive survey of certification. This Article uses the AJS’s survey as a starting point to examine the development of certification over the past twenty-five years. Were the fears of its critics well founded, or have the federal and state judiciaries adapted to mitigate the shortcomings of certification? Has certification been a useful tool in allowing for development of state law by the state judiciary, or has it been an imposition on the judiciary of a coequal sovereign?

Beyond these questions, this Article also will look at how certification has expanded beyond …

Hoopa Valley Tribe V. Ferc, Fredrick Aaron Rains

Public Land & Resources Law Review

In Hoopa Valley Tribe v. FERC, the Hoopa Valley Tribe challenged the intentional and continual delay of state water quality certification review of water discharged from a series of dams on the Klamath River in California and Oregon. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the states of Oregon and California, and PacifiCorp, a hydroelectric operator, were implementing an administrative scheme designed to circumvent a one-year temporal requirement for review imposed on states by the Clean Water Act. This scheme allowed PacifiCorp to operate the series of dams for over a decade without proper state water quality certification. The United States …

Digital Forensics, A Need For Credentials And Standards, Nima Zahadat

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The purpose of the conducted study was to explore the credentialing of digital forensic investigators, drawing from applicable literature. A qualitative, descriptive research design was adopted which entailed searching across Google Scholar and ProQuest databases for peer reviewed articles on the subject matter. The resulting scholarship was vetted for timeliness and relevance prior to identification of key ideas on credentialing. The findings of the study indicated that though credentialing was a major issue in digital forensics with an attentive audience of stakeholders, it had been largely overshadowed by the fundamental curricula problems in the discipline. A large portion of research …

A Conceptual And Comparative Analysis Of The Obligations Of Third-Party Certifiers, Jan De Bruyne

Ohio Northern University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Certifying Questions In First Amendment Cases: Free Speech, Statutory Ambiguity, And Definitive Interpretations, Clay Calvert

UF Law Faculty Publications

In the First Amendment-based speech cases of both Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Mansky in 2018 and Expressions Hair Design v. Schneiderman in 2017, Justice Sonia Sotomayor forcefully contended that the United States Supreme Court should have certified questions about statutory meaning to the highest relevant state court. This Article examines certification—its purposes, its pros, and its cons—in cases pivoting on whether ambiguous state statutes violate the First Amendment. Mansky and Expressions Hair Design provide timely analytical springboards. The Article argues that certification carries heightened importance today. That is because the justices now frequently fracture along perceived political lines over when …

Active Model Of The Notary: A New Type Of Notarial Acts, G. Axmedova

Review of law sciences

The article considers the issues concerning the introduced new type of notarial act, related to the decision of certification of the meeting of juridical bodies.

Active Model Of The Notary: A New Type Of Notarial Acts, G. Axmedova

Review of law sciences

The article considers the issues concerning the introduced new type of notarial act, related to the decision of certification of the meeting of juridical bodies.

20th Annual Open Government Summit: Access To Public Records Act And Open Meetings Act, 2018, Department Of Attorney General, State Of Rhode Island

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

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The Dialectical Regulation Of Rule 14a-8: Intersystemic Governance In Corporate Law, Robert B. Ahdieh

Robert B. Ahdieh

In recent years, Rule 14a-8 of the Securities Exchange Act - first adopted more than sixty years ago to increase shareholder participation in corporate governance - has been the subject of a flurry of litigation, scholarly analysis, and SEC rulemaking. Most recently, following several years of debate, the SEC issued a significant clarification of the rule, reversing the Second Circuit's hotly contested interpretation of it in AFSCME v. AIG. For the most part, the debates surrounding Rule 14a-8 - including in the latter case - have focused on the scope of the rule's exceptions. This paper, selected for reprinting in …

You Down With Mwbe? Yeah You Know Me: A Summary Of The Mbe, Wbe, And Dbe Programs In The State Of Missouri, Shomari Benton, David Lloyd

The Business, Entrepreneurship & Tax Law Review

The State of Missouri and Missouri municipalities want to encourage minority and women owned businesses in their communities. The governments have created formalized programs to utilize these businesses. The purpose of these programs is to increase participation of women, minority, and other historically disadvantaged businesses in government related contracts. To bid upon or enter into government related contracts, minority, women, and other historically disadvantaged groups must apply for and receive program certification by different government entities. The certification application and process can be confusing, time consuming, and costly. But with guidance, can be navigated and be beneficial to minority and …

Law Library Blog (January 2018): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

More Ways To Protect Llc Owners And Preserve Llc Flexibility, Peter Molk

UF Law Faculty Publications

This online companion to Protecting LLC Owners While Preserving LLC Flexibility considers several alternative approaches that might unify LLCs’ twin goals of owner protection and governance flexibility. I examine self-regulation, private certification, investor-led market forces, lawyers in their gatekeeping capacity, and mandated disclosure systems. Ultimately, each of these alternatives proves less satisfying than a system that bifurcates LLC law based on the presumed sophistication of LLC owners.

The Admissibility Of Sampling Evidence To Prove Individual Damages In Class Actions, Hillel J. Bavli, John Kenneth Felter

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The 2016 Supreme Court decision in Tyson Foods, Inc. v. Bouaphakeo revived the use of “representative” or sampling evidence in class actions. Federal courts are now more receptive to class plaintiffs’ efforts to prove classwide liability and, occasionally, aggregate damages, with sampling evidence. However, federal courts still routinely deny motions for class certification because they find that calculations of class members’ individual damages defeat the predominance prerequisite of Rule 23(b)(3). As a result, meritorious classwide claims founder. In this paper, we combine legal and statistical analyses and propose a novel solution to this dilemma that adheres to the Tysondecision …

Beyond Westphalia: Competitive Legalization In Emerging Transnational Regulatory Systems, Errol E. Meidinger

Errol Meidinger

Published as Chapter 7 in Law and Legalization in Transnational Relations, Christian Brütsch & Dirk Lehmkuhl, eds.

This paper analyzes several emerging transnational regulatory systems that engage, but are not centered on state legal systems. Driven primarily by civil society organizations, the new regulatory systems use conventional technical standard setting and certification techniques to establish market-leveraged, social and environmental regulatory programs. These programs resemble state regulatory programs in many important respects, and are increasingly legalized. Individual sectors generally have multiple regulatory programs that compete with, but also mimic and reinforce each other. While forestry is the most developed example, similar …

"Private" Environmental Regulation, Human Rights, And Community, Errol E. Meidinger

Errol Meidinger

Private organizations have recently established numerous programs aimed at improving the environmental performance of industry. Many of the new programs seek to define and enforce standards for environmental management, and to make it difficult for producers not to participate in them. They claim, explicitly and implicitly, to promote the public interest. They take on functions generally performed by government regulatory programs, and may change or even displace government programs. Private programs thus have the potential to significantly reshape domestic and international policy institutions. This paper describes three major private environmental regulatory programs applicable to forestry and discusses their implications for …