Law Commons^™

The New Activist Non-Profits: Four Models Breaking From The Non-Profit Industrial Complex, Michael Haber

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

Twenty-first century activists—inspired by recent social movements and criticisms of the “non-profit industrial complex”—have increasingly sought to avoid pursuing their activism through the hierarchical, professionally managed non-profit corporations that have been the norm for social justice organizations since the 1970s. While many of these activist groups have chosen to remain unincorporated, some activists have been experimenting with new, innovative structures for non-profit organizations, structures that aim to better align activists’ organizations with their values.

This Article presents four models of activist non-profits:

(1) sociocratic non-profits,

(2) worker self-directed non-profits,

(3) hub-and-spoke counter-institutions, and

(4) swarm organizations.

It describes how these …

Tried And True: Fair Use Tales For The Telling, Sarah E. Mccleskey, Courtney L. Selby

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

On Thursday, March 1, 2018, the Harvard Library Office for Scholarly Communication hosted “Tried and True: Fair Use Tales for the Telling,” a one-day program celebrating Harvard’s Fifth Anniversary of Fair Use Week. Leading fair use scholars and practitioners shared their stories and engaged in lively discussion about the powerful and flexible fair use provision of the Copyright Act and its applications. Topics included treatment of the fair use doctrine in recent jurisprudence, conflicts over the use of visual works in remixes and mash-ups, academic work and social commentary, filmmaking, controlled digital lending practices in libraries, software preservation, and more. …

Knitting 101: Why Law Professors Should Share Their Hobbies With Their Students, Susan Greene

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

For many students, adrift in a sea of outlines and anxiety over the pressures of being a law student, cultivating a hobby or even developing a new one seems a luxury in time and energy that they cannot afford. Therefore, it is incumbent upon law professors to lead by example.

Publicity Rights And The Estate Tax, Mitchell M. Gans

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

The estate tax treatment of publicity rights has played a role in the debate about the state law question whether such rights should be transferable at death. Some point to the estate tax as a reason for making publicity rights non-transferable. For if they are transferable, estate-tax inclusion could result. And, the argument goes, the estate or the beneficiaries could well be coerced into commercializing the rights in order to raise the money to pay the tax. Making them non-transferable would eliminate this possibility. This article considers some of the connections between the federal estate tax and the state law …

Tinder Lies, Irina D. Manta

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

The rise of Internet dating—in recent years especially through the use of mobile-based apps such as Tinder or Bumble—forces us to reexamine an old problem in the law: how to handle sexual fraud. Many people with romantic aspirations today meet individuals with whom they do not share friends or acquaintances, which allows predators to spin tales as to their true identities and engage in sexual relations through the use of deceit on a greater scale than was previously practicable. Indeed, according to some studies, about eighty percent of individuals lie on at least some part of their online dating profiles, …

A Real-Property Model Of Privacy, G. Alex Sinha

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

Privacy has been a significant subject of scholarly attention for decades, but it has never been more confusing than it is today. As myriad social pressures inexorably corral an ever-growing share of the world’s population down the digital rabbit hole, more and more people become both users and targets of new technologies. The complexity of these technologies and their unprecedented interactions with one another have completely outstripped the ability of the populace as a whole to understand the privacy implications of our new and shifting reality. Confronting privacy questions in this context is all but paralyzing.

This Article offers a …

Foreign Corruption Of The Political Process Through Social Welfare Organizations, Norman I. Silber

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

This article examines alternative ways in which nonprofit social welfare organizations might be held accountable for channeling illegal foreign contributions to favored political candidates. Dangers intrinsic to allowing foreign countries, foreign nationals, and foreign corporations to influence the American electoral process have justified an outright prohibition on this conduct; clandestine channeling of foreign funds directly from political organizations or indirectly through religious organizations and into the hands of political candidates has been prosecuted previously. This exploration is prompted by the emerging possibility that during the Congressional elections of 2016 and the Presidential election of that year, large-scale, illegal donations from …

Adding Risk Assessment And Negotiation To A Drafting Course, Richard K. Neumann Jr.

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Aspiring To A Model Of The Engaged Judge, Ellen Yaroshefsky

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

This symposium essay, relying on the work of numerous federal judges who have changed the course of criminal justice and civil rights, argues that judges should aspire to be the “Engaged Judge” — that is, a judge who acts in the best traditions of the role by engaging in creative and often bold solutions in order to advance a “justice mission.” The article discusses the contours of that justice mission, emphasizing that engaged judges should not substitute their own morality for the law or become result-oriented by tailoring legal principle to fit the judge’s prior convictions. It explores the various …

Taking Stock Of The Benefit Corporation, Ronald J. Colombo

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

Almost a decade ago, the “benefit corporation” made its first appearance on American soil. Its supporters proclaimed that this would usher in a new era of corporate social responsibility. Its detractors complained, among other things, that the Benefit Corporation would facilitate managerial abuses that corporate law had worked so hard to curb. After nearly ten years of experience with the benefit corporation, who was the more accurate prognosticator? Moreover, has the benefit corporation given rise to developments, whether beneficial or negative, that were not expected or foreseen?

This article traces the history of the benefit corporation, with a focus on …

(Un)Civil Denaturalization, Cassandra Burke Robertson, Irina D. Manta

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

Over the last fifty years, naturalized citizens in the United States were able to feel a sense of finality and security in their rights. Denaturalization, wielded frequently as a political tool in the McCarthy era, had become exceedingly rare. Indeed, denaturalization was best known as an adjunct to criminal proceedings brought against former Nazis and other war criminals who had entered the country under false pretenses.

Denaturalization is no longer so rare. Naturalized citizens’ sense of security has been fundamentally shaken by policy developments in the last five years. The number of denaturalization cases is growing, and if current trends …

Resolving Health Care Conflicts: A Comparative Study Of Judicial And Hospital Responses, Janet L. Dolgin

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Regulation Of Lawyers In Government Beyond The Representation Role, Ellen Yaroshefsky

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

The article focuses on legal ethics issues for government lawyers in the U.S. Topics discussed include laws governing disciplinary consequence for lawyers who have engaged in criminal conduct under the American Bar Association's Model Rules of Professional Conduct; the U.S. President Donald Trump's relationship with intelligence agencies; and the U.S. Supreme Court case New York Times Co. v. Sullivan on defamation.

A Political Interpretation Of Vagueness Doctrine, Guyora Binder, Brenner M. Fissell

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

The “void-for-vagueness” doctrine requires the specific definition of criminal offenses. In this Article, though, we claim it does more: it largely restricts criminalization decisions to legislatures, which are unlikely to criminalize conduct they see as both harmless and widespread. Thus, rather than constitutionalizing the harm principle and thereby assuming a judicial obligation to define harm, the Supreme Court has used the vagueness doctrine to constrain majorities to make their own assessments of harmfulness. While American law has no explicit requirements that criminal liability be created by legislation or conditioned on harm, the vagueness doctrine achieves those ends indirectly.

A Pluralistic Approach To Mediation Ethics: Delivering On Mediation's Different Promises, Robert A. Baruch Bush

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

The article explores a pluralistic approach to mediator ethics by examining a hypothetical case involving a classic dilemma confronted by practicing facilitative and transformative mediators. In the case, a divorced couple fight over full custody of their 11-year-old daughter. Also cited are the dilemma confronting the mediator as s/he is against the agreement reached by the couple, the nature of ethical dilemma, as well as the mediation codes and models.

The Need For Peer Mentoring Programs Linked To The Legal Writing Class: An Analysis And Proposed Model, Amy R. Stein

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Keeping Ip Real, Irina D. Manta

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

This symposium contribution analyzes the relationship between intellectual property and tangible property, focusing on four types of intellectual property: copyrights, trademarks, patents, and trade secrets. It posits that—contrary to popular conceptions—the question of rivalrousness should be viewed as central both to owners’ use of IP-protected goods and to others’ infringement of the underlying IP rights (just as that attribute lies at the heart of the concept of real and other tangible property). Rivalrousness typically arises where consumption of a good by a consumer prevents simultaneous consumption of that good by other consumers or, in the tangible property context, where simultaneous …

Why Congress Drafts Gibberish, Richard K. Neumann Jr.

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

We are so used to Congressional gibberish that we take it for granted as though it were caused by nature. Congress doesn’t know how to create logically coherent statutes.

An example is the Vacancies Reform Act of 1998. If, while violating the Act, a President purportedly appoints a person — perhaps to be an Acting Attorney General or Acting Deputy Attorney General — every decision and action of that person is void because the person does not actually hold the office. The Act is crystal-clear that such a person would have no power, for example, to fire a Special Counsel. …

Gundy And The Civil-Criminal Divide, Jenny Roberts

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Judge Damon Keith: The Judicial Antidote To Judge Julius Hoffman - Challenging Claims Of Unilateral Executive Authority, Ellen Yaroshefsky

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

From some of the highly-publicized trials of the 1960's - namely the trials of the Chicago Eight, Panther Twenty-One, Weathermen - we can draw indispensable lessons about the role of the judges in upholding and promoting a fair justice system. The contract to Judge Julius Hoffman's notorious injudicious conduct in the Chicago 8 case is the courageous, thoughtful Judge Damon Keith, in the less publicized White Panther case in Detroit in the early 1970's. Judge Keith's overriding sense of fairness, exemplified the best of judicial independence in considering President Nixon's claims of unilateral executive authority in US v. Ayers and …

Explaining Criminal Sanctions In Intellectual Property Law, Irina D. Manta

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

This symposium piece first seeks to unpack the relationship between intellectual property infringement and property offenses, and then to understand how the connection between the two has informed when the former is criminalized. The piece examines the porous nature of the boundary line between intangible and tangible resources, showing the at-times uncomfortable fit of the non-rivalrous label to intellectual property. An analysis of the respective harms of the two types of violations follows. This symposium contribution shows how lawmakers have treated patents differently from other forms of intellectual property by choosing not to criminalize their infringement, due both to utilitarian …