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Full-Text Articles in Law

A New Private Law Of Policing, Cristina Carmody Tilley Mar 2024

A New Private Law Of Policing, Cristina Carmody Tilley

Brooklyn Law Review

American law and American life are asymmetrical. Law divides neatly in two: public and private. But life is lived in three distinct spaces: pure public, pure private, and hybrid middle spaces that are neither state nor home. Which body of law governs the shops, gyms, and workplaces that are formally accessible to all, but functionally hostile to Black, female, poor, and other marginalized Americans? From the liberal midcentury onward, social justice advocates have treated these spaces as fundamentally public and fully remediable via public law equity commands. This article takes a broader view. It urges a tort law revival in …


Affirmatively Furthering Health Equity, Mary Crossley Mar 2024

Affirmatively Furthering Health Equity, Mary Crossley

Brooklyn Law Review

Pervasive health disparities in the United States undermine both public health and social cohesion. Because of the enormity of the healthcare sector, government action, standing alone, is limited in its power to remedy health disparities. This article proposes a novel approach to distributing responsibility for promoting health equity broadly among public and private actors in the healthcare sector. Specifically, it recommends that the Department of Health and Human Services issue guidance articulating an obligation on the part of all recipients of federal healthcare funding to act affirmatively to advance health equity. The Fair Housing Act’s requirement that recipients of federal …


Puerto Rican Presidential Voting Rights: Why Precedent Should Be Overturned, And Other Options For Suffrage, Sigrid Vendrell-Polanco Mar 2024

Puerto Rican Presidential Voting Rights: Why Precedent Should Be Overturned, And Other Options For Suffrage, Sigrid Vendrell-Polanco

Brooklyn Law Review

The United States has continued to hold Puerto Rico as a colony, much like the British empire did the US colonies, and has given it no clear path to incorporation, statehood, or independent sovereignty. It has also denied its citizens the right to vote for their president and have voting representation in Congress. Current case law regarding Puerto Rican presidential voting rights and voting representation in Congress rests on precedent that dates almost as far back as its acquisition—the infamous Insular Cases. This case law is inconsistent with prior precedent, constitutional principles, and does not account for Puerto Rico’s contributions …


Emerging Technologies And Perfection Of Security Interests: A Financial University Of Uncertainty, Elizabeth M. Wagenbach Mar 2024

Emerging Technologies And Perfection Of Security Interests: A Financial University Of Uncertainty, Elizabeth M. Wagenbach

Brooklyn Law Review

Since the founding of Bitcoin in 2009, digital assets, such as cryptocurrency, have exploded in popularity. Cryptocurrency has been associated with stories of immense profit and immense loss. The lucky transactors have been able to capitalize on the price fluctuations of cryptocurrency, while the unlucky transactors became victims of the same volatility, losing tremendous amounts of money. The novelty and ingenuity of cryptocurrency has been coupled with mass confusion to transactors and regulators alike. These early days of cryptocurrency have been characterized by a sort of regulatory tug of war that is a direct result of confusion of what cryptocurrency …


My Body, Whose Choice? A Case For A Fundamental Right To Bodily Autonomy, Miri Trauner Mar 2024

My Body, Whose Choice? A Case For A Fundamental Right To Bodily Autonomy, Miri Trauner

Brooklyn Law Review

In 2022, the US Supreme Court decided Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade and the fundamental right to abortion it had established nearly fifty years prior. The Court’s decision threw into uncertainty the future of not only reproductive rights in this country, but also many other individual rights. At the same time as the decision, the world was still reeling from a global pandemic, and the development of COVID-19 vaccines had spurred widespread controversy over the constitutionality of vaccine mandates. Both advocates for abortion access and opponents to vaccine mandates shared a common cry: “my …


Artful Imbalance: How The Us Tax Code And State Trust Laws Enable The Growth Of Inequality Through High-Value Art Collections, Mimi Strauss Mar 2024

Artful Imbalance: How The Us Tax Code And State Trust Laws Enable The Growth Of Inequality Through High-Value Art Collections, Mimi Strauss

Brooklyn Law Review

The United States has become the leading jurisdiction for those who wish to buy and store high-value art and NFTs, pay as few taxes as possible, and ultimately secure their wealth for generations. This “onshore” tax crisis is the result of tax loopholes, money laundering, the securitization of art and NFTs, and the state-by-state trust system. These forms of tax dodging—both legal and illegal—contribute to wealth inequality and deplete the welfare state. As natural disasters and pandemics become ever more present, the United States will rely more heavily on taxes, and that burden should be carried by everyone, not just …


Essentializing Cultures In Us Asylum Law, Jaclyn Kelley-Widmer, Estelle Mckee Mar 2024

Essentializing Cultures In Us Asylum Law, Jaclyn Kelley-Widmer, Estelle Mckee

Brooklyn Law Review

Asylum applicants must tell a story about their home country that reduces and problematizes its culture. The requirements of asylum law demand that an applicant show why they will suffer persecution in their home country and that their government will not protect them from it. This legal framework prompts applicants to present a narrative in which their home culture plays the role of the ultimate antagonist, the force that propels the applicant’s persecutors to single them out for harm and renders their government passive—or even complicit—in the face of it. Such a narrative necessarily reduces the applicant’s culture to its …


Dogma, Discrimination, And Doctrinal Disarray: A New Test To Define Harm Under Title Vii, Zach Islam Mar 2024

Dogma, Discrimination, And Doctrinal Disarray: A New Test To Define Harm Under Title Vii, Zach Islam

Brooklyn Law Review

Historically, federal courts have used the “adverse employment action” test in Title VII disparate treatment, disparate impact, and retaliation cases to determine whether a plaintiff has suffered adequate harm. This note argues that this approach is fundamentally flawed. At the outset, the test is a judicial power grab with no support in the statutory language. What is more, it fails to uphold the plain policy purposes for Title VII by largely ignoring evidence of discriminatory acts in the workplace that Congress sought to prevent in passing the statute. Consequently, Title VII plaintiffs get the short end of the stick with …


One-Offs, William Araiza Jan 2024

One-Offs, William Araiza

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Surveilling Disability, Harming Integration, Prianka Nair Jan 2024

Surveilling Disability, Harming Integration, Prianka Nair

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Freedom On Paper: Reforms To Women’S Rights In Saudi Arabia Will Not Be Effective Until Male Guardianship Is Abolished, Mackenzie Kramer Dec 2023

Freedom On Paper: Reforms To Women’S Rights In Saudi Arabia Will Not Be Effective Until Male Guardianship Is Abolished, Mackenzie Kramer

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Male guardianship, a societal custom derived from Islamic law, renders women in Saudi Arabia second class citizens. The country’s preservation of male guardianship has broken its agreement to adhere to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the leading international women’s rights treaty. Throughout the past decade the country’s Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman al Saud (“MbS”), has issued rulings that work to slowly dismantle the apparatus of male guardianship. These developments have been both meaningful and restrained; MbS attempts to tread lightly into human rights reforms to garner the support of western allies, …


Trademark Infringement: The Likelihood Of Confusion Of Nfts In The Us And Eu, Sara Sachs Dec 2023

Trademark Infringement: The Likelihood Of Confusion Of Nfts In The Us And Eu, Sara Sachs

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

The immutability of non-fungible tokens has made it an invaluable tool for asset ownership and authentication across a variety of industries. With the proliferation of NFTs comes the need to protect trademarks and prevent consumer confusion in the digital age. This Note explores the existing legal framework for trademark law in the United States and European Union. This Note argues for a new trademark standard that reflects the interconnected nature of a global digital society.


Background Noise: Lessons About Media Influence, Mitigation Measures, And Mens Rea From Argentine And Us Criminal Cases, Agustina Mitre, Matthew P. Cavedon Dec 2023

Background Noise: Lessons About Media Influence, Mitigation Measures, And Mens Rea From Argentine And Us Criminal Cases, Agustina Mitre, Matthew P. Cavedon

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

This Article reflects on the influence that intense media coverage can have on high-profile criminal cases and considers ways to reconcile defendants’ right to a fair trial with press freedom, comparing approaches and cases from Argentina and the US. The Article begins by discussing the tension between journalists’ and defendants’ rights (Part I). It then surveys how the US seeks to mitigate media influence (Part II). After this, it notes two recent Argentine mitigation measures (Part III). Next, it conducts a legal analysis of the Fernando Báez Sosa case, blaming media pressure for errors in the judgment and then proposing …


Public Participation In The Constitution-Making Process: The Afghan Experiment, Shamshad Pasarlay Dec 2023

Public Participation In The Constitution-Making Process: The Afghan Experiment, Shamshad Pasarlay

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

This Article explores the public participation process conducted during the drafting of Afghanistan’s 2004 Constitution. It examines scores of questionnaires, public comments, written submissions and minutes of town hall meetings that the framers used to gather public opinion and input. The Article highlights that the makers of the 2004 Constitution of Afghanistan designed and implemented an extensive public participation process, but public opinion did not have a real impact on constitutional outcomes. Instead, the content of the constitution was settled by the political elites whose agreement was needed for constitutional ratification. Drawing on this case study, the paper suggests that …


How (Not) To Deal With The Bubble Effect In Cyberspace: The Case Of The Eu And Digital Services Act, João Tornada Dec 2023

How (Not) To Deal With The Bubble Effect In Cyberspace: The Case Of The Eu And Digital Services Act, João Tornada

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Deliberative democracies are based on an ideal process of speech and dialogue that fosters an “uninhibited, robust, and wide-open” public discourse sphere. In cyberspace, social networks and search engine platforms largely operate with recommender systems that tailor content according to the users' interests and online behavior (“profiling”), thus segregating them from different points of view (“bubble effect”). While this personalization of content is particularly efficient to promote commercial goods and services, when it comes to information of common interest, especially on political matters, it undermines consensus-building dialogue and threatens democratic ideals. The theory of a free “marketplace of ideas” justifies …


The Gospel Of Federalism: How The Deification Of Political Ideology Impedes The United States’ Abortion Law Scheme, Nicole Jakobson Dec 2023

The Gospel Of Federalism: How The Deification Of Political Ideology Impedes The United States’ Abortion Law Scheme, Nicole Jakobson

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

In 2022, the United States Supreme Court decided Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which ended the federal abortion protection established under Roe v. Wade. The Court reasoned that abortion restriction is properly regulated by state governments, and thus a federal abortion law scheme is unconstitutional. In substance, the Court was safeguarding the enduring political and legal principle of federalism. This Note draws a comparison between the United States’ treatment of federalism and foreign jurisdictions’ treatment of religion within the context of abortion. This Note argues that the United States’ preoccupation with federalism is analogous to appeals to religion in …


The Sword, The Shield, And The Jab: How Nato Can Bypass The Un And World Health Organization To Help Control And Prevent Future Pandemics, Aaron Earlywine Dec 2023

The Sword, The Shield, And The Jab: How Nato Can Bypass The Un And World Health Organization To Help Control And Prevent Future Pandemics, Aaron Earlywine

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

An autopsy of the world’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic reveals many preexisting conditions that only exacerbated the crisis. Chief among them are the failures and obfuscations of the World Health Organization (WHO). The WHO is sick with corruption, incompetence, or at very least riddled with dysfunction. This is not the first time the WHO has proven itself unable to meet the demands of global health initiatives, let alone global health crises. Not only is this dysfunctional organization proving itself to be a money-consuming abscess, but hostile powers, namely China, have used it to covertly wield influence and shield themselves …


Whom Is Corporate Esg Integration For?, Ryan Brennan Dec 2023

Whom Is Corporate Esg Integration For?, Ryan Brennan

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Notions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and more recently, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) have found their way into the boardrooms of the world’s largest corporations. The prominence of this trend has revived the timeless debate over the true function of for-profit business. Traditional theory calls for a corporation to maximize shareholder’s profits—a view known as “shareholder primacy.” A competing contemporary school of thought finds that corporate purpose naturally extends beyond generating return on the investment of a given shareholder to reflect social objectives and the many dependent constituents of a business. As it stands, US corporate law tracks the …


Enough Excuses On Drug Importation: A New Transnational Paradigm For Fda Regulation And Lower Us Drug Prices, Gabriel Levitt Dec 2023

Enough Excuses On Drug Importation: A New Transnational Paradigm For Fda Regulation And Lower Us Drug Prices, Gabriel Levitt

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which enforces drug safety laws, asserts that under most circumstances the importation of prescription drugs is illegal. Yet because of high drug prices in the United States, over the past couple of decades, tens of millions of Americans have imported prescription drugs for personal use. For many, this was their only way to afford them. A unique array of federal laws, regulations, and policies, including the de facto decriminalization of the practice of personal drug importation, have in effect permitted personal drug importation. The same exceptions, however, are not available for commercial drug …


Situating Bystanders Within Strict Products Liability, Mark A. Geistfeld Dec 2023

Situating Bystanders Within Strict Products Liability, Mark A. Geistfeld

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

"The largely neglected role of bystanders within products liability is reflected in the extensive scholarship of Professor Aaron Twerski—the rightly celebrated honoree of this symposium. Within Twerski’s vast body of impressive publications, his limited discussions of bystanders align with the widely held assumption that, aside from the problems they pose for the consumer expectations test, bystanders do not merit much attention within the context of products liability. Bystander injuries are much more important than is commonly recognized; one must focus on them to adequately identify the conditions under which consumer-choice doctrines properly limit tort liability. Because the varied rules of …


In The Duty Wars, I'M Switzerland, W. Bradley Wendel Dec 2023

In The Duty Wars, I'M Switzerland, W. Bradley Wendel

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

The “duty wars” have been raging among tort scholars for some time, sparked by the Third Restatement’s deflationary approach to the duty element of the negligence cause of action. Defenders of the traditional approach to duty insist that it is necessary to ensure that tort law stays on the right side of the boundary between public and private law insofar as the negligence tort recognizes a relational conception of rights owed among individuals. The worry is that negligence shorn of the duty element becomes an instrument of efficiency or deterrence rather than recognizing obligations. Relatedly, the approach pioneered by the …


Expert Evidence: The Gatekeeper Role Of Justice, Victor E. Schwartz Dec 2023

Expert Evidence: The Gatekeeper Role Of Justice, Victor E. Schwartz

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

No abstract provided.


Not All Product-Caused Harm Is "Products Liability", Michael D. Green Dec 2023

Not All Product-Caused Harm Is "Products Liability", Michael D. Green

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

"Since two important federal preemption decisions by the United States Supreme Court, those injured by warnings defects in the drugs they take may sue the manufacturer only if the patient took a brand-name drug. Those who took the generic version of the drug, which comprise approximately 90 percent of all prescriptions, cannot sue the drug manufacturer regardless of how inadequate its labeling is in explaining the risks of consuming the drug. Clever plaintiffs’ lawyers began bringing suits on behalf of their generic-drug-consuming clients against brand-name manufacturers that, under the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, control the labeling both on their …


Professor Aaron Twerski: Special Master In The 9/11 Responders' Litigation, Stephan Landsman Dec 2023

Professor Aaron Twerski: Special Master In The 9/11 Responders' Litigation, Stephan Landsman

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

No abstract provided.


Enterprise, Liability, And Insolvency: An Essay In Honor Of Aaron Twerski, Edward J. Janger Dec 2023

Enterprise, Liability, And Insolvency: An Essay In Honor Of Aaron Twerski, Edward J. Janger

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Modern tort law links concepts of duty, duty of care, causation, and compensatory damages in a manner that, it is hoped, simultaneously communicates moral suasion, redresses wrongs, and incentivizes “reasonable” socially appropriate behavior. Deterrence and corrective justice differ fiercely about the scope of and rationale for liability, but both assume that tortfeasors are good for their debts (or at least insured). This is not always the case. Sometimes, debtors are insolvent. Bankruptcy law provides individuals with a route to a fresh start, and this paper considers the relationship between modern tort law and the discharge of debt in bankruptcy. The …


Aaron Twerski — Practical Wisdom At Ground Zero, Anthony J. Sebok Dec 2023

Aaron Twerski — Practical Wisdom At Ground Zero, Anthony J. Sebok

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

This Article celebrates Professor. Aaron Twerski’s “practical wisdom” in crafting a solution (with Jim Henderson) to a problem faced by Judge Alvin Hellerstein in the so-called 9/11 First Responder cases. The problem was that Congress did not include these plaintiffs within the Victims Compensation Fund (“VCF”) despite there being every reason to suspect that the interaction of workersman’s compensation law and tort law, if left to operate on their own, would generate a politically unacceptable outcome. Despite his clear misgivings – —expressed decades earlier – —about allowing those who control the workplace to enjoy the benefits of limited liability guaranteed …


The Constitutional Claim To Individuation In Tort — A Tale Of Two Centuries, Part 2, Douglas A. Kysar Dec 2023

The Constitutional Claim To Individuation In Tort — A Tale Of Two Centuries, Part 2, Douglas A. Kysar

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

This Article—drafted to honor Professor Aaron Twerski on the occasion of his festschrift at Brooklyn Law School—draws inspiration from his classic 1989 article on market share liability. In that article, Professor Twerski observed that doctrinal confusions in market share liability arose from judges who “had their feet firmly planted in two different centuries—one foot in the nineteenth century and the other in the twenty-first century.” This Article takes inspiration from Twerski’s “two centuries” metaphor to examine the rise of constitutional objections by defendants to certain doctrinal innovations that attempt to adapt tort law to modern ways of causing, identifying, and …


Getting The Law Right: An Essay In Honor Of Aaron Twerski, John C. P. Goldberg, Benjamin C. Zipursky Dec 2023

Getting The Law Right: An Essay In Honor Of Aaron Twerski, John C. P. Goldberg, Benjamin C. Zipursky

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Written in honor of the great torts scholar Aaron Twerski, this article critically analyzes disturbing developments in New York negligence law as it applies to police who injure innocent bystanders. With the New York Court of Appeals’ 2022 decision in Ferreira v. City of Binghamton as a focal point, it argues that Ferreira and other contemporary decisions have largely betrayed the promise of the 1929 Court of Claims Act, which waived state and municipal immunity for police torts. While courts may be warranted in recognizing certain limits on police negligence liability that do not apply to private actors, the current …


Engaging With Professor Twerski In The Choice Of Law Revolution, Robert A. Sedler Dec 2023

Engaging With Professor Twerski In The Choice Of Law Revolution, Robert A. Sedler

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

No abstract provided.


It's Finally Time For A National Data Privacy Law: A Discussion Of The American Data Privacy And Protection Act (Adppa), Erin J. An Dec 2023

It's Finally Time For A National Data Privacy Law: A Discussion Of The American Data Privacy And Protection Act (Adppa), Erin J. An

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Millions of Americans face unprecedented privacy risks related to their data, often without their awareness. With the increasing value of consumer data and its growing utilization by businesses, there is a growing demand for greater transparency and privacy protections. As of 2023, no comprehensive federal law governs data privacy in the United States, leaving citizens with limited protections. Introduced to Congress on June 21, 2022, the American Data and Privacy Protection Act (ADPPA) successfully passed the House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce, making it the furthest a national comprehensive data privacy bill has progressed through the federal legislative …