Law Commons^™

Is Organized Gambling A Threat To The Integrity Of Transnational Individual Sport Competitions?, Ilias Bantekas

San Diego International Law Journal

Match-fixing is egregious at the mid and lower tiers of professional and semi-professional individual sports, particularly, if not exclusively, where the relevant governing body allows real time gambling of matches and tournaments at these lower tiers. Evidence demonstrates that in sports such as tennis and badminton, the bulk of the prize money is distributed to a small minority of athletes at the top tier and instances of match-fixing there are rare as a result. There are, however, many thousands of athletes at the lower tiers that are unable to make ends meet and whose expenses far outweigh any meagre prize …

Equity And Sustainable Development Under Climate Regime Of Bangladesh, Mahatab Uddin

San Diego International Law Journal

Equity and Sustainable Development are two important guiding principles of the international climate regime formed under the umbrella of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 1992. All international legal instruments concluded under the climate regime, including the recently adopted Paris Agreement, have acknowledged these two principles as their guiding principles. Consequently, all countries or parties to the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement require integrating these two principles with their national level climate change related laws and policies. Bangladesh, as a party to the UNFCCC and all other subsequent instruments including the Paris Agreement, is also required to incorporate …

The Protection Of Legitimate Expectations In International Law, Halil Rahman Basaran

San Diego International Law Journal

The argument of this Article is that international law has still not reached a stage wherein the protection of legitimate expectations can become a general principle of law. In that respect, the most favorable terrain for the protection of legitimate expectations, namely, inter-state negotiations, still largely remains outside international law. In pursuing this argument, this Article first examines the notions of national sovereignty, legal institution and inter-state boundaries. This paper then looks at the notion of general principles of law and highlights the principle of equity. Finally, the Article discusses the Bolivia v. Chile case and places international investment law …

Outsmarting Smart Devices: Preparing For Ai Liability Risks And Regulations, Kathryn Bosman Cote

San Diego International Law Journal

As AI technology continues to advance rapidly, establishing a new model for AI regulation will be crucial to protect both companies and consumers. The U.S. must consider consumer safety as well as innovation-conducive policies when assigning liability to AI. By using EU regulatory guidance as a starting point, this paper argues that a multi-tiered liability scheme coupled with a Uniform AI ethical framework and the creation of an independent AI regulatory agency would aid the U.S. in striking the right balance to effectively combat the risks posed by AI and IoT.

Help The People Help The Governments Help The Planet: Using Markets To Meet The Goals Of The Paris Agreement, Rachel Braby

San Diego International Law Journal

The urgency of the climate challenge requires that we address it in every way we can. Yet, current domestic regulations are insufficient to rise to the occasion, and there appears to be no plan geared toward harnessing the power of collective consumer action to supplement government efforts and push industries in the private sector to engage in greener practices. A majority of developed nations have mixed market-driven economies, and in such economies, consumers have immense power to drive change. Paris Agreement nations with mixed market-driven economies should incorporate a strategic plan in their next NDCs that “represent[s] a progression” beyond …

International Conformity To The Standard Minimum Age Of Criminal Responsibility: Comparing The Minimum Age Of Criminal Responsibility To The Minimum Legal Age Of Marriage, Malea Casillas

San Diego International Law Journal

As this data shows, countries across the globe, irrespective of culture, comply with and uphold the international MLAM. In contrast, they simultaneously fail to agree to the international MACR. The universal conformity with the international MLAM demonstrates that countries understand the negative consequences of marriage at a young age and care to protect children against child marriage. However, the even lower MACRs across the globe indicate that most of our world values prosecution over protection and likely sees offender first and child second.

This Comment will argue that MACR and MLAM should be recognized as similar legal concepts that are …

Free Speech Censorship In The Philippines: The Push To Decriminalize Libel, Carter Cordura

San Diego International Law Journal

Philippine criminal libel law is unjustly being used to suppress and censor the media and press; libel should be decriminalized and redefined to uphold the ideals of due process and freedom of expression enumerated in the Philippine Constitution.

This Comment takes a deep dive into Philippine libel law and argues for its decriminalization and redefining from an international perspective.

Saving Genus Claims For Antibody Patents: What We Can Learn From The Foreign Jurisdictions, Ningxi Sun

San Diego International Law Journal

In the United States, therapeutic antibodies play a key role in the innovations for life-saving therapies. Genus claims—broad claims that cover a group of related species – are widely used in antibody patents, allowing the patentee to obtain broad protection of their inventions. However, a recent line of Federal Circuit decisions has created a higher bar to obtaining patent protection for antibodies. Specifically, it is now nearly impossible to maintain an antibody genus claim. Noteworthy, the United States’ treatment for antibody claims is diverging from other major jurisdictions in the world.

This Article argues the Supreme Court and Congress should …

Fairness At The Forefront: Transgender Athlete Participation In The Olympics, Baylee Swidler

San Diego International Law Journal

This Article will examine how the IOC framework has developed over the years, focusing specifically on where it is now, and how it affects transgender athletes, cisgender athletes (athletes whose biological sex matches their gender identity), and future athletes. Players worldwide are affected differently by the decisions of each International Federation, depending on whether fairness or inclusion is prioritized. Sport at lower levels can be significantly influenced by the independent regulations of each sport federation, even for younger athletes. My proposal, rather than simply stating that reform is necessary after the implementation of the IOC 2021 framework, is instead, to …

Medical Board Of California, Emily Powers, Marcus Friedman

California Regulatory Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

V.24-1, 2023 Masthead

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

No abstract provided.

A Bloodless, Crownless, Hydroponic Conservatism: America In The 21st Century, Rachel Lu

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

Defining conservatism feels audacious. The mere attempt seems to place us in company with Lincoln, Kirk, Buckley, Hayek, Oakeshott, Scruton, Reagan and Thatcher, and many more illustrious personalities. One can hardly aspire to offer the definitive take; at best, we might hope to draw meaningful connections between a long-running conversation about conservatism, and the cultural or political struggles of our own time. That less-ambitious goal may still be very worthwhile, however. There is a reason why conservatives love to debate conservatism. It helps us to identify worthwhile goals, and remind ourselves why they matter. Looking at the political right today, …

Nature, Tradition, And Virtue: Restoring The Conservative Good Life, Bruce P. Frohnen

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

Conservatism, always a contested term, has become the subject of major confusion in the post-Cold War era. As it emerged after the Second World War in the writings of Russell Kirk and the pages of William F. Buckley’s National Review, the conservative movement already was more coalition than single program or philosophy. The notion of conservative “fusionism” was a convenient but superficial means of holding together libertarians, politically under-defined anti-communists, and traditional conservatives in pursuit of their common public policy goals. As the Cold War wound down and the Republican Party devolved into neoliberal globalism, the movement dissolved into mutually …

Traditionalism Rising, Marc O. Degirolami

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

Constitutional traditionalism is rising. From due process to free speech, religious liberty, the right to keep and bear arms, and more, the Court made clear in its 2021 term that it will follow a method that is guided by “tradition.”

This paper is in part an exercise in naming: the Court’s 2021 body of work is, in fact, thoroughly traditionalist. It is therefore a propitious moment to explain just what traditionalism entails. After summarizing the basic features of traditionalism in some of my prior work and identifying them in the Court’s 2021 term decisions, this paper situates these recent examples …

The Forgotten Path Of Liberal Conservatism: What Yoram Hazony Ignores, Daniel J. Mahoney

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

Today, in academic and intellectuals circles it is a besieged minority that affirms that the freest, most prosperous, most self-critical societies in the history of the world have been bequeathed a patrimony worth preserving. We have lost a meaningful and robust sense of what constitutes the West as the West (in fact, the term itself has no real resonance with the younger generations). The “Other” in faraway places, to use a fashionable abstraction, is beyond criticism since cultural and moral criticism are in those cases de rigueur; but the appropriate response to the faults of rule-of-law societies in the …

Conservatives Divide On Matters Of Principle, Maimon Schwarzschild

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

The conservative phenomenon in the United States in the years since the Second World War has entailed—I hesitate to say “embraced”—a variety of diverging views, preoccupations, and commitments, some of them at least in tension with, if not actually opposed to, one another. This has been true for conservative writers, thinkers, and publicists; it has also been true for America’s conservative voting constituencies. For many decades, conservatives were often said to be subdivided between traditionalists and libertarians. There were (and are) diverging tendencies even among the traditionalists: these tendencies can be religious or secular, with styles and emphases that diverge …

Progressivism, Conservatism, And Democracy, William Voegeli

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

“Conserve” is a transitive verb, one that conveys little unless followed by a direct object. The meaning of conservatism then, depends on what conservatives want to conserve: why it’s valuable, therefore meriting conservation; and why it’s vulnerable, therefore requiring conservation.

The answer to that question will vary from one time and place to another. During the Cold War, American conservatives bristled when newspapers referred to the most inflexible, doctrinaire Soviet leaders as the Kremlin’s “conservatives.” But this journalistic shorthand wasn’t absurd: it’s hard to identify a conservative essence discernible in all political settings. A skeptical, wary attitude regarding change …

The Use And Abuse Of Tradition: A Comment On Degirolami’S Traditionalism Rising, Andrew Koppelman

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

Marc DeGirolami’s essay, Traditionalism Rising, argues that the Supreme Court is now deploying what he calls “traditionalist methodology” to decide cases, and that when it cites tradition it is following a “larger, longstanding interpretive method.”

The paper is a valuable contribution that documents an important trend. The Court is in fact invoking tradition with remarkable frequency. But it is a mistake to call what the Court is doing a single “methodology.” Tradition is relevant in different ways in different contexts. It is confusing to conflate them.

Contemporary Conservative Thought: The View From San Diego, William A. Galston

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

At the conference on “Modern Conservative Political Philosophy” convened at the University of San Diego on September 16–17, 2022, eleven authors presented papers. They fall into four broad categories.

Three of the papers offer broad defenses of conservatism as it has been theorized and practiced in the United States since the 1950s. William Voegeli observes—accurately—that “by following their own premises, an increasingly postmodern Left and an increasingly premodern Right have ended up questioning the worth and feasibility of republican self-government.” This leaves the beleaguered Center, long the common ground between traditional liberals and traditional conservatives. According to Voegeli, this “increasingly …

On Preserving A Political Community In Revolutionary Times, Scott Yenor

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

Among the hardest things to do in politics is to understand the current situation. Partisan loyalties cloud perspective. Political actors make overwrought charges in order to rile up their partisans. Things that seem important often are not, while small changes can lead to political revolutions. Revolutions often come without countries or political communities knowing, until it is too late.

Conservatism, Ideology, Skepticism, Brandon Turner

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

The occasion for this essay concerns the prospects of modern conservative political philosophy; more directly, it calls for the provision of “a systematic and comprehensive account of conservatism.” Given our present moment, at which the political parties and institutions of the political right seem increasingly unmoored from any philosophical anchor, such an occasion appears altogether appropriate. Yet there is good reason to think that accounts of conservatism will not be systematic in the way desired and will in fact tend to rule out entirely systematic approaches—at least according to the commonplace understanding of “systematic”—to government or political philosophy. The belief—often …

Meanings, Speech Acts, And Legal Contents Produced By Plural Lawmaking Bodies, Scott Soames

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

Language is both our most powerful cognitive tool and our most basic social institution, without which neither law, government, nor science would be possible. Because it is so central to nearly everything we do, its familiarity tempts us to overestimate how much we understand about the way it functions in different domains. My task is to illuminate (i) how to extract legal content from linguistic acts of lawmakers in the United States, and (ii) how this linguistically expressed content is sometimes modified by legal interpretation, when law is applied to particular cases. Although (i-ii) are grounded in facts about ordinary …

Deontology In Graphs: An Elucidation, Alec Walen

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

Representing conceptual relationships in graphic form can be clarifying. The exercise can make the graph composer and the graph reader ask questions they otherwise might not have asked. Of course, graphs also require the composer to make choices: what do you put in, what do you merely approximate, what do you try to make precise, what might look more precise than you mean to be? These choices need to be explained and defended to make the graphs meaningful representational tools. But if explained and defended, graphs can provide a distinctively helpful tool, especially to those like moral philosophers who tend …

Revitalizing The Right, David Azerrad

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

Debating the nature of conservatism may well be the favorite hobby of American conservatives. While the question will never be resolved to anyone’s satisfaction, it is a pleasant enough pastime to detract from the failures of the American conservative movement to conserve much anything of worth (unless you count the movement itself, in all its sinecurial grifting splendor, as something of worth).

Return To Deliberation, Richard M. Reinsch Ii

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

American conservatism finds itself facing an array of difficult if not intractable challenges and problems. Progressive elements dictate revolutionary claims about gender, race, economics, policing, alongside their dismissal of American history as just racism, sexism, and homophobia. Moreover, progressives sit atop the commanding heights of culture, education, social media, influential corporations, and the federal bureaucracy. Conservatives still win elections about half the time, but face incredible problems in governing because of this political, cultural, and educational imbalance of power.

The Social Clerisy: Conservative Political Philosophy As A Philosophy Of Pluralism And The Social Group, Luke C. Sheahan

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

Conservative political philosophers should be counted among, as Nisbet writes, “those thinkers who have resisted the appeal of the One, the unitary and monistic, and have found not merely reality but freedom and justice and equity to lie in plurality.” They should take as their starting point Nisbet’s tradition of the plural community. Given our place in history, following the increasing alienation and decline of social groups chronicled by Putnam and others, conservatives should feel free to pillage the ideas of pluralist thinkers outside the conservative tradition. Nisbet admits repeatedly throughout the decades of his long career that there seems …

Growing, Growing, Gone: How Dobbs Fundamentally Altered The Way Reproductive Freedom, Private And Professional Liability, And Constitutional Rights Will Be Analyzed In A Post–Roe America, Amanda J. Sharp

San Diego Law Review

This Note examines the Dobbs decision and its implications. Part II analyzes the history of abortion rights in the United States, including the role Dobbs played in overturning precedential cases. Part III describes the legal implications of Dobbs, including the status of abortion rights and how this decision altered the state of women’s healthcare. It then addresses Dobbs’ indirect implications, including its potential impacts on the foster care system, implied liability in healthcare professions, data privacy laws, and the employer-employee relationship. Part IV briefly proposes next steps that could be taken and concludes with a call to action.

West Virginia’S “Major Questions” And The Silent Disappearance Of The Chevron Doctrine, Hunter W. Collins

San Diego Law Review

This Note analyzes the Court’s determination that an administrative agency’s action must be explicitly authorized under “clear congressional authorization” when it involves great “economic and political significance.” Part II of this Note provides a brief overview of the CAA and how the act has been used to cut GHG pollution. Part III examines the EPA’s focus on the power sector in particular, as well as the paths that differing presidential administrations have taken to provide a stable energy grid. Part IV discusses the litigation between West Virginia and the EPA, which resulted in the controversial 6–3 decision in the Supreme …

Protecting The Promise To The Families Of Tuskegee: Banning The Use Of Persuasive Ai In Obtaining Informed Consent For Commercial Drug Trials, Jennifer S. Bard

San Diego Law Review

This is the first article to call for a ban on the use of AI technology designed to influence human decision-making, “Persuasive AI,” for the purpose of recruiting or enrolling human participants in drug trials sponsored by commercial entities. It does so from a perspective of precaution, not fear. Advances in Artificial Technology that can assist human decision-making have tremendous potential for good. It makes the case for doing so based on both the substantial risk of harm to the decision-making process and the ineffectiveness of intermediate regulatory measures. This Article looks directly at Persuasive AI, a type of AI …

V.60-4, 2023 Masthead

San Diego Law Review

No abstract provided.