Law Commons^™

Dispatches From The Trenches Of America's Great Gun Trust Wars, Lee-Ford Tritt

NULR Online

No abstract provided.

Why Scalia Should Have Voted To Overturn Doma, Andrew Koppelman

NULR Online

No abstract provided.

A Visual Guide To United States V. Windsor: Doctrinal Origins Of Justice Kennedy's Majority Opinion, Colin Starger

NULR Online

No abstract provided.

The Moonscape Of Tax Equality: Windsor And Beyond, Anthony C. Infanti

NULR Online

No abstract provided.

Doma's Ghost And Copyright Reversionary Interests, Brad A. Greenberg

NULR Online

No abstract provided.

The Fox Guarding The Henhouse: The Regulation Of Pharmacy Benefit Managers By A Market Adversary, Joanna Shepherd

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

Pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) save Americans billions of dollars each year by lowering both the prices that consumers pay for prescription drugs and the prices that health plans pay for drug coverage. As I explain in this Article, however, new regulatory developments in some states threaten to undercut competition in the PBM industry and disrupt the cost-savings PBMs currently generate. The regulatory scheme that was adopted by Mississippi in 2011, and that is currently under legislative consideration in several other states, shifts regulatory control of PBMs from the neutral Insurance Commissions to the states’ Boards of Pharmacy. The fundamental problem …

Sentencing The Family: Recognizing The Needs Of Dependent Children In The Administration Of The Criminal Justice System, Tamar Lerer

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

Hundreds of thousands of incarcerated persons are parents; in many instances, their incarceration has profound effects on their young children. Despite the predictable harm that the these children experience when their caretakers are incarcerated, the criminal justice system lacks a uniform, principled, and transparent way to consider their interests at critical stages in the process.

In this Article, I argue that the interests of the children of incarcerated offenders should be considered and demonstrate how this can be done. The paper proceeds in three Parts. In the first Part, I explain why we should care about caretaker incarceration: it harms …

Booking Students: An Analysis Of School Arrests And Court Outcomes, Kerrin C. Wolf

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

The fate of school discipline and security in America is at a crucial turning point. While the “school-to-prison pipeline” has recently received an increased amount of attention from policy makers interested in improving public education, the recent shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut led to renewed calls for the heightened security measures that helped give rise to the pipeline. This article provides clear evidence that heightened disciplinary and security measures in schools are faulty policy responses, as they have adverse impacts on the students they intend to protect and siphon resources away from policies that more effectively ensure …

Sex In The Sexy Workplace, Lua Kamál Yuille

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

This article presents yet another problem that cannot be addressed adequately either through an honest application of existing sexual harassment paradigm under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or through any of the solutions to that paradigm’s deficiencies that have been proffered since its inception: hostile environment sexual harassment of the non-sexualized worker in the “sexy” workplace. It offers a comprehensive doctrinal illustration of how both existing sexual harassment doctrine and popular critiques of that doctrine fail to respond to the unique case of the sexual harassment of a non-sexualized worker in the sexual titillation industry (e.g. …

Fqhcs And Health Reform: Up To The Task?, James Hennessy

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

This Article addresses the future of Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) in an entirely reformed primary care landscape under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Given health centers’ ability to fill crucial access gaps that will remain after health reform, FQHCs stand to undertake an increased role and are thus vital to the implementation of the ACA. Yet questions remain as to whether current FQHCs are capable of taking on an increased demand for services resulting from ACA expansion. Health centers are already busy, and more patients are coming as many burdens of health reform will inevitably fall on their shoulders. …

Skin Flicks Without The Skin: Why Government Mandated Condom Use In Adult Films Is A Violation Of The First Amendment, Elizabeth Sbardellati

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

The filming of sexual acts for publication is legal in California, which has led to the development of a robust adult film industry in Southern California, particularly in the Los Angeles area. Recently, regulations have been proposed that would require actors in pornographic films to wear condoms. This comment examines legal objections to “The County of Los Angeles Safer Sex in the Adult Film Industry Act” and CalOSHA’s assertion that California law requires the use of prophylactics in adult films. It argues that sexual expression in these adult films is protected under the First Amendment, although it may still be …

International Cryptography Regulation And The Global Information Economy, Nathan Saper

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

With the meteoric rise of the Internet and e-commerce in the 1990s came great attention to the problems and opportunities associated with cryptography. Throughout that decade, the United States and many foreign countries debated and experimented with various forms of cryptography regulation, and attempts were made at international harmonization. Since then, however, policy-making activity around cryptography has slowed, if not halted altogether, leaving individuals and companies to face a bewildering array of regulations—or, in many cases, to face regulations that are extraordinarily unclear and haphazardly applied.

This Note seeks to introduce the reader to the issue of international cryptography regulation …

The Collision Of Social Media And Social Unrest: Why Shutting Down Social Media Is The Wrong Response, Mirae Yang

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

With the growing availability of Internet access across the globe, social media has transformed the traditional relationship between government authority and its citizens by providing the people with an innovative and powerful means to harmonize their efforts in expressing their political and social concerns. The importance of safeguarding Internet availability is more critical than ever before as access to the Internet is now the means by which the world communicates, stays informed, and engages in daily tasks. In the face of potential social unrest fueled by social media, the United States must take a preventative approach, one that matches our …

Do-Not-Track As Default, Joshua A.T. Fairfield

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

Do-Not-Track is a developing online legal and technological standard that permits consumers to express their desire not to be tracked by online advertisers. Do-Not-Track has the ability to change the relationship between consumers and advertisers in the information market. Everything will depend on implementation. The most effective way to allow users to achieve their privacy preferences is to implement Do-Not-Track as a default feature.

The World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) standard setting body for Do-Not-Track has, however, endorsed a corrosive standard in its Tracking Preferences Expression (TPE) draft. This standard requires consumers to set their privacy preference by hand. This …

Quality In European Trade Mark Law, Andrew Griffiths

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

This article addresses the capacity of trade marks to provide assurance concerning product quality and the importance of this capacity in promoting competition and various forms of innovation. It considers the meaning of “quality” in this context and shows how this can include the aesthetic and intangible characteristics of products as well as their functional and material characteristics. And it is suggested that quality assurance should cover the whole range of variable product characteristics to which at least some consumers attach value. This is because the key economic problem that underlies the need for this assurance is the difficulty that …

Addressing The Impediments Copyright Imposes On The Use Of Patent Specifications And Prior Art Documents To Improve Patent Quality, Ben Mceniery

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

This article considers from an Australian perspective the impediments that copyright law places in the path of those who seek to use patent specifications and non-patent prior art documents in ways that are necessary to the proper functioning of the patent system. Until recently, copyright law in Australia had limited the uses to which members of the public could put patent specifications in that country. Those impediments have been removed as a result of an important legislative change to the way in which copyright in patent specifications can be enforced. The change gives the public a greater freedom to make …

Hero With A Thousand Copyright Violations: Modern Myth And An Argument For Universally Transformative Fan Fiction, Natalie H. Montano

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

Copyright law is designed to protect the ownership and financial rights of the original author of a literary work. However, the internet has created new opportunities for amateur writers to create their own fan fiction based on such literary works. Borrowing from the ideas and characters of a work, fan fiction authors build upon and re-imagine these stories. Such fan works should be protected under the Fair Use Defense, but the power imbalance between amateur fan fiction authors and successful published authors often leads to the eradication of fan stories from the public domain.

This Comment argues that fan fiction …

The Dog Days Of Fourth Amendment Jurisprudence, Kit Kinports

NULR Online

No abstract provided.

The Orphan Drug Act: How The Fda Unlawfully Usurped Market Exclusivity, Sumin Kim

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

The Board of KV Pharmaceutical bet the company on the success of Makena®, a pre-term birth drug. However, in the midst of a public outcry over the excessive pricing of Makena®, the FDA declared that it would not honor the market exclusivity that KV Pharmaceutical had obtained for Makena® under the Orphan Drug Act. As a result, KV Pharmaceutical filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. This Note analyzes the situation under the lens of the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Specifically, I argue that market exclusivity for Makena® was private property and thus, the FDA unlawfully usurped KV Pharmaceutical’s private …

Heavyweight Bots In The Clouds: The Wrong Incentives And Poorly Crafted Balances That Lead To The Blocking Of Information Online, Anjanette H. Raymond

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

The United States and the European Union have long recognized the need to protect ISPs from potential liability from customers using their services to infringe intellectual property rights. These protections arise from a long-standing belief that intellectual property right holders should bear the burden of protecting their property, even in the quick moving Internet environment. However, a recent series of cases has called into question the ISPs’ liability protections as their technology is often the only real means to prevent wide scale infringing activity. This series has caused courts to revisit ISPs’ liability and to impose a ‘cooperative burden’ requiring …

Patent Claims Revisited, Dargaye Churnet

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

This paper proposes that the most beneficial patent reform begins with claim drafting regulations. Part I serves as an introduction. Part II highlights the problems with the nation’s current patent system. This section discusses how each of these problems is caused in part by the current claim drafting regulations. Part III reviews the changes made by the America Invents Act. Part IV proposes new regulations for claim drafting that will offer more significant benefits than those provided by the America Invents Act. Specifically, this paper argues that by requiring applicants to include a claim chart defining each claim limitation, examiners …

See No Evil: How The Supreme Court’S Decision In Global-Tech Appliances, Inc. V. Seb S.A. Further Muddles The Intent Element Of Induced Infringement, Jeremy Adler

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

The Supreme Court in Global-Tech Appliances, Inc. v. SEB S.A. clarified the requisite intent for induced patent infringement when it applied the concept of willful blindness. This Article argues that the Court’s decision was misguided and complicates an already confused doctrine. The Article first explores inducement jurisprudence up to and including the Global-Tech decision, and then reviews the doctrine of willful blindness and its application in the criminal context. The Author then argues that using willful blindness in the patent context creates practical and theoretical difficulties that only deepen uncertainty for innovators who seek to avoid infringement liability.

The Definite Article: The D.C. Circuit's Redefinition Of Recess Appointments, Jeff Vandam

NULR Online

No abstract provided.

It's Time For An Immigration Jury, Daniel I. Morales

NULR Online

No abstract provided.

A Janus Look At International Criminal Justice, Diane Marie Amann

Northwestern Journal of Human Rights

No abstract provided.

Provisional Release At The Icty: Rights Of The Accused And The Debate That Amended A Rule, Raphael Sznajder

Northwestern Journal of Human Rights

No abstract provided.

Superior Responsibility, Inferior Sentencing: Sentencing Practice At The International Criminal Tribunals, Christine Bishai

Northwestern Journal of Human Rights

No abstract provided.

Delegating Investigations: Lessons To Be Learned From The Lubanga Judgment, Caroline Buisman

Northwestern Journal of Human Rights

No abstract provided.

Scsl In The Year 2011: Atrocity Crime Litigation Review For The Year 2011, William Magenya, Paulina Paz Zavala, Regina Trillo

Northwestern Journal of Human Rights

No abstract provided.

Chief Justice Roberts's Individual Mandate: The Lawless Medicine Of Nfib V. Sebelius, Gregory P. Magarian

NULR Online

No abstract provided.