Law Commons^™

Virtual Trials: Necessity, Invention, And The Evolution Of The Courtroom, Susan A. Bandes, Neal Feigenson

Buffalo Law Review

Faith in the legitimating power of the live hearing or trial performed at the place of justice is at least as old as the Iliad. In public courtrooms, litigants appear together, evidence is presented, and decisions are openly and formally pronounced. The bedrock belief in the importance of the courtroom is rooted in common law, constitutional guarantees, and venerated tradition, as well as in folk knowledge. Courtrooms are widely believed to imbue adjudication with “a mystique of authenticity and legitimacy.” The COVID-19 pandemic, however, by compelling legal systems throughout the world to turn from physical courtrooms to virtual ones, disrupts …

The Life And Death Of Confederate Monuments, Jessica Owley, Jess Phelps

Buffalo Law Review

Confederate monuments have again received increased attention in the aftermath of George Floyd’s tragic death in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 25, 2020. Momentum and shifting public opinion are working toward the removal of these problematic monuments across the country. This Article seeks to provide insight for monument-removal advocates: specifically focusing on the legal issues associated with the “death” or removal of these monuments, how property law shapes and defines these efforts, and briefly examining what happens to these statues after removal. Our exploration of Confederate monuments reveals that some removal efforts occur outside of legally created processes. Both public and …

On Justice: An Origin Story, Stephen Paskey

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Police Body Cameras: Go Big Or Go Home?, Ronald J. Coleman

Buffalo Law Review

Police body-worn cameras have proliferated since the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, and the recent George Floyd-related protests seem set to continue or even accelerate that trend. Indeed, in her recent Nieves v. Bartlett dissent, Justice Sotomayor took time to note that many departments equip their police officers with body cameras. Body camera advocates have touted the cameras’ benefits, such as decreasing misconduct, reducing complaints, and improving accountability. At the same time, serious concerns have been raised regarding the impact of these cameras on privacy, public resources, and fairness. Despite the increased interest in body cameras, important empirical …

Court-Packing Time? Supreme Court Legitimacy And Positivity Theory, Stephen M. Feldman

Buffalo Law Review

Many progressives have decided they need to change the Supreme Court to break the conservative justices’ lock on judicial power. Yet those same progressives disagree about the best way to change the Court. This Essay begins by comparing straight-forward court-packing—adding justices to shift the partisan balance on the Court—to other possible Court changes, such as court-curbing measures that would reduce the Court’s power. Court-packing has multiple advantages over these other possibilities, not the least of which is that even the current Roberts Court would almost certainly hold court-packing, unlike other potential changes, to be constitutional. Even so, some progressives view …

An Approach To Improving Judicial Review Of The Apa’S “Good Cause” Exception To Notice-And-Comment Rulemaking, Kevin Hartnett Jr.

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Does The Ftc Have Blood On Its Hands? An Analysis Of Ftc Overreach And Abuse Of Power After Liu, Angel Reyes, Benjamin Hunter

Buffalo Law Review

Recent cases have called the Federal Trade Commission’s (“FTC”) enforcement methods into question. After a circuit split developed in the wake of the Seventh Circuit’s decision in Federal Trade Commission v. Credit Bureau Center, L.L.C., the Supreme Court responded by granting certiorari and consolidating the case with AMG Capital Management, L.L.C. v. Federal Trade Commission. The issue in these cases is whether Section 13(b) of the FTC Act authorizes the FTC to bypass the due process safeguards mandated by Congress in Sections 5 and 19 of the FTC Act and, in doing so, to conduct warrantless searches and seizures, unilaterally …

Commentary On Emerson V. Magendantz, Lucinda M. Finley

Contributions to Books

Published as Chapter 13 of Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Tort Opinions, Martha Chamallas & Lucinda M. Finley, eds. (Cambridge University Press 2020). Emerson v. Magendantz assesses how to measure harm when people get pregnant after a negligently performed sterilization, or have disabled children after genetic counseling or prenatal testing misdiagnosed the risk. The court permitted parents to recover child-rearing costs only for disabled children, reasoning that the emotional benefits of a healthy child invariably outweigh its economic burdens. Critiquing this reasoning as a double insult to the disabled and to the importance of reproductive autonomy, the feminist rewritten opinion uses the …

A Poll Tax By Another Name: Considering The Constitutionality Of Conditioning Naturalization And The “Right To Have Rights” On An Ability To Pay, John Harland Giammatteo

Journal Articles

Permanent residents must naturalize to enjoy full access to constitutional rights, particularly the right to vote. However, new regulations from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), finalized in early August and originally slated to go into effect one month before the 2020 election, would drastically increase the cost of naturalization, moving it out of reach for many otherwise-qualified permanent residents, while at the same time abolishing any meaningful fee waiver for low-income applicants. In doing so, USCIS has sought to condition naturalization and its attendant rights on an individual’s financial status. In this Essay, I juxtapose the new fee regulations …

Technologies Of Language Meet Ideologies Of Law, Anya Bernstein

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Copyright And The Brain, Mark Bartholomew

Journal Articles

This Article exploresthe intersection of copyright law, aesthetic theory, and neuroscience. The current test for copyright infringement requires a court or jury to assess whether the parties’ works are “substantially similar” from the vantage point of the “ordinary observer. ”Embedded within this test are several assumptions about audiences and art. Brain science calls these assumptions into question. The substantial similarity test posits that aesthetic reactions are unmeasurable and uniform. In actuality, they can be quantified and vary depending on audience and artistic medium. Neuroscience has already reconfigured the law in many areas, from tort damages to the death penalty. Now …

May It Please The Court: A Longitudinal Study Of Judicial Citation To Academic Legal Periodicals, Brian T. Detweiler

Law Librarian Journal Articles

Part I of this article examines the proportion of reported opinions from U.S. federal and state courts between 1945 and 2018 that cite at least one academic legal periodical, while Part II applies that data beginning in 1970 to compare the proportion of opinions that cite to the flagship journals of 17 law schools selected and hierarchically categorized based on their U.S. News & World Reports rankings. Representing the most elite schools are Harvard Law Review and Yale Law Journal, the two longest running student-edited journals at arguably the two most prestigious law schools in the United States, followed by …

Centralization Of The Academic Law Library: Is It Right For Your Institution?, Elizabeth G. Adelman

Contributions to Books

Published in Academic Law Libraries Within the Changing Landscape of Legal Education: A Primer for Deans and Provosts, Michelle M. Wu, Scott B. Pagel & Joan S. Howland, eds.

The Gun Subsidy, Christian Turner, Justin C. Van Orsdol

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Comment: Loosening The Grasp Of Restriction By Allowing Multiple Claims In Design Patents, Samuel E. Kielar

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Respondeat Superior Vicarious Liability For Clergy Sexual Abuse: Four Approaches, Patrick Hornbeck

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Lies, Gaslighting And Propaganda, G. Alex Sinha

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Access To Literacy Under The United States Constitution, Christine M. Naassana

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Lawrence Friedman's Crime Without Punishment: Aspects Of The History Of Homicide, Guyora Binder

Book Reviews

No abstract provided.

The Public Problem With Counterterrorism, David A. Westbrook, Mark Maguire

Other Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Presidential Selection: Historical, Institutional, And Democratic Perspectives, James A. Gardner

Contributions to Books

Published as Chapter 1 in The Best Candidate: Presidential Nomination in Polarized Times, Eugene Mazo and Michael Dimino, eds.

It has been nearly two centuries since an American presidential election has evoked a crisis of confidence like that following the election of 2016. Not since the election of Andrew Jackson in 1828 has there been such a public display of anxiety concerning the methods by which we choose our chief executive. As in the contest of 1828 pitting the Democrat Jackson against his Federalist opponent John Quincy Adams, the presidential nominating process of 2016 produced a contest between a celebrity …

Climate Change And Causation: Joining Law And Climate Science On The Basis Of Formal Logic, Petra Minnerop, Friederike Otto

Buffalo Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Coal Shines A Light On The Need For A Just Energy Transition In The United States, Patrick R. Baker, Blake Tims

Buffalo Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Practical Alternatives To The Rule Of Joint And Several Liability: Regulatory Negligence As A Case Study, Boaz Segal

Buffalo Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Governor Northam’S Executive Order 43: One Stone And Two Birds For Virginia Energy Policy, Antonia M. Douglas

Buffalo Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

States Of Uncertainty: The Origins Of Law And Community In Three American Towns, David M. Engel

Journal Articles

From Festschrift for Carol Greenhouse

El Dilema Democrático De La Refrendación Directa De Los Acuerdos De Paz [The Democratic Dilemma Of The Popular Ratification Of Peace Agreements], Jorge Luis Fabra-Zamora

Journal Articles

En este ensayo se explora el “dilema democrático” que surge en la refrendación directa de los acuerdos de paz, es decir, en las consultas adelantadas para que la ciudadanía apruebe o rechace el convenio alcanzado por las partes para la terminación de un conflicto. El dilema presenta dos cuernos, por un lado, es necesario que la comunidad afectada por el acuerdo lo refrende para su legitimidad y viabilidad, y por el otro lado, que los mecanismos democráticos de consulta directa tienen serias dificultades para adelantar tal refrendación. El objetivo principal de este estudio es proporcionar una caracterización del dilema que …

Sexual Lynching, Luis E. Chiesa

Journal Articles

Different groups of people experience rape in different ways. Empirical evidence confirms that women fear rape considerably more than men, that incarcerated males fear being sexually assaulted more than non-incarcerated males, and that transgender individuals are more fearful of being raped than cisgender individuals. In the case of women, fear of rape often conditions many decisions females make, including what to wear, where to go, and how much to drink. In the prison context, fear of rape leads many men to adopt overly aggressive behaviors as a way of safeguarding against being raped. Genderqueer people often follow a series of …

Climbing To 1011: Globalization, Digitization, Shareholder Capitalism And The Summits Of Contemporary Wealth, David A. Westbrook

Journal Articles

While we may find many sorts of inequality in the United States and elsewhere, this essay is about the specific form of inequality exemplified by Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates, that is, the Himalayan summits of contemporary wealth, mostly in the United States. Such wealth results from the confluence of three historical developments.

First, the social processes referred to under the rubric of “globalization” have created vast markets. A dominant position in such markets leads not only to great wealth, but the elimination of peers. Since there are few such markets, relatively significant wealth is possessed by very few people. …

Democratic Legitimacy Under Conditions Of Severely Depressed Voter Turnout, James A. Gardner

Journal Articles

Due to the present pandemic, it seems increasingly likely that the 2020 general election in November will be held under conditions of unprecedented downward pressure on voter turnout. The possibility of severely depressed turnout for a highly consequentialpresidential election raises troubling questions of democratic legitimacy. Although voter turnout in the United States has historically been poor, low turnout is not usually thought to threaten the legitimacy of electoral processes when it results from voluntary abstention and is distributed unsystematically. Conversely, electoral legitimacy is often considered at risk when nonvoting is involuntary, especially when obstacles to voting fall systematically on specific …