Law Commons^™

Radical Administrative Law, Christopher S. Havasy Assistant Professor Of Law

Vanderbilt Law Review

The administrative state is under attack. Judges and scholars increasingly question why agencies should have such large powers to coerce citizens without adequate democratic accountability. Rather than refuting these critics, this Article accepts that in scrutinizing the massive powers that agencies hold over citizens, these critics have a point. However, their solution—to augment the powers of Congress or the President over agencies to instill indirect democratic accountability—is one step too quick. We should first examine whether direct democratic accountability of agencies by the citizenry is possible.

This Article excavates the nineteenth-century European intellectual history following the rise of the modern …

Mass Tort Bankruptcy Goes Public, William Organek -- Assistant Professor Of Law

Vanderbilt Law Review

Large companies like 3M, Johnson & Johnson, Purdue Pharma, and others have increasingly, and controversially, turned from multidistrict litigation to bankruptcy to resolve their mass tort liability. While corporate attraction to bankruptcy’s unique features partially explains this evolution, this Article reveals an underexamined driver of this trend and its startling results: government intervention. Governments increasingly intervene in high-profile bankruptcies, forcing firms into insolvency and dictating the outcomes in their bankruptcy cases. Using several case studies, this Article demonstrates why bankruptcy law should subject such governmental actions to greater scrutiny and procedural protections. Governments often assume multiple incompatible roles in these …

The Missing "T" In Esg, Danielle A. Chaim -- Assistant Professor, Gideon Parchomovsky -- Professor Of Law

Vanderbilt Law Review

Environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) philosophy is the zeitgeist of our time. The rise of ESG investments came against the perceived failure of the government to adequately promote socially important goals. And so, corporations are now being praised and credited for stepping up where the government has fallen short. In this Essay, we contend that the standard narrative of ESG suffers from a major flaw. The reason for this discrepancy is taxes. The companies that are widely perceived as saviors of the ESG era are in fact the cause of some of the main deficiencies ESG seeks to redress. Astoundingly, …

An Evolving Landscape: Name, Image, And Likeness Rights In High, Adam Epstein -- Professor, Dept. Of Finance And Law, Nathaniel Grow -- Associate Professor Of Business Law & Ethics, Kathryn Kisska-Schulze -- Assoc. Professor Of Business Law

Vanderbilt Law Review

Amateur sports have entered a changing landscape. The onset of Name, Image, and Likeness (“NIL”) opportunities at the college level has prompted over half of state high school athletic associations to likewise permit high school student-athletes to pursue similar financial opportunities. The purpose of this Essay is not to argue for or against the emergence of NIL opportunities at the high school level but instead to explore this newly evolving landscape, identify accompanying financial dangers, and propose a statutory framework that builds upon California’s Coogan’s Law—a measure providing financial safeguards to children working in the entertainment industry—to better protect minor …

Free Speech For Me But Not For Airbnb”: Restricting Hate-Group Activity In Public Accommodations, Sabrina Apple -- J.D. Candidate, 2024

Vanderbilt Law Review

As digital services grow increasingly indispensable to modern life, courts grow inundated with novel claims of entitlement against these platforms. As narrow, formalistic interpretations of Title II permit industry leaders to sidestep equal access obligations, misinformed interpretations of First Amendment protections allow violent speech and conduct to parade uninhibited. Within the mistreatment of these two established doctrines lies a critical distinction: the former is in desperate need of modernization to fulfill its original intent, and the latter is in desperate need of restoration for the same ends. This climate creates conditions ripe for doctrinal upheaval. This Note considers how the …

Exasperated But Not Exhausted: Unlocking The Trap Set By The Exhaustion Doctrine On The Fda’S Rems Petitioners, Michael Krupka

Vanderbilt Law Review

When health is at stake, bureaucratic delays can be disastrous. This is especially true in the field of pharmaceutical regulation. Fortunately, concerned parties—ranging from research institutions and universities to doctors and pharmaceutical companies—can file citizen petitions to urge the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) to regulate potentially risky drugs through Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies (“REMS”) programs. But despite submitting comprehensive citizen petitions calling for changes to REMS determinations, petitioners regularly await the FDA’s response for years. When these petitioners, still awaiting an FDA determination, have sought recourse in the courts, the agency has argued that these petitioners have not …

Res Judicata And Multiple Disability Applications: Fulfilling The Praiseworthy Intentions Of The Fourth And Sixth Courts, Amber Mae Otto

Vanderbilt Law Review

In the United States, the application process to receive disability benefits through the Social Security Administration is often a tedious, multistep procedure. The process becomes even more complex if a claimant has filed multiple disability applications covering different time periods. In that circumstance, the question arises as to whether an administrative law judge hearing a claimant’s second application must make the same findings as the administrative law judge who heard the first application. In other words, how should res judicata function in the administrative law context when a claimant has filed for disability multiple times? Currently, circuits differ on this …

Efficiency At The Price Of Accuracy: The Case For Assigning Mdls To Multiple Districts And Circuits, Isaak Elkind

Vanderbilt Law Review

28 U.S.C. § 1407 allows for the centralization of unique cases into a single forum for pretrial purposes. The product is multidistrict litigation, known colloquially as the “MDL.” While initially conceived as a means of increasing efficiency for only particularly massive, complex litigation, MDLs have become pervasive. Today, over fifteen percent of all civil litigation—and fifty percent of all federal civil litigation—is consolidated into MDLs. Yet, MDLs are commonly overconsolidated, such that only one judge presides over hundreds, thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of individual cases at a time. Fewer than three percent of such cases return to their …

Barring Judicial Review, Laura E. Dolbow -- Sharswood Fellow

Vanderbilt Law Review

Whether judicial review is available is one of the most hotly contested issues in administrative law. Recently, laws that prohibit judicial review have sparked debate in the Medicare, immigration, and patent contexts. These debates are continuing in challenges to the recently created Medicare price negotiation program. Yet despite debates about the removal of judicial review, little is known about how often, and in what contexts, Congress has expressly precluded review. This Article provides new insights about express preclusion by conducting an empirical study of the U.S. Code. It creates an original dataset of laws that expressly preclude judicial review of …

The Labor Gerrymander, Joel Heller

Vanderbilt Law Review

The foundational metaphor of federal labor law is “industrial democracy.” But like any good metaphor, it is subject to overuse. The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) grants employees the right to have a say in the decisions that govern their working lives through union representation and collective bargaining. Parties and policymakers often invoke the language of American political democracy when describing and debating that right. Democracy is not a unitary concept, however, and not all norms and concepts from the political sphere can or should translate into the labor sphere.

This Article interrogates the political-model analogy through the lens of …

Too Stubborn To Care For: The Impacts Of Discrimination On Patient Noncompliance, Alice Abrokwa

Vanderbilt Law Review

The role of implicit racial biases in police interactions with people of color has garnered increased public attention and scholarly examination over time, but implicit racial bias in the healthcare context can be as deadly, particularly when it intersects with ableism and sexism. Researchers have found that medical providers are more likely to consider Black patients “noncompliant,” meaning the patient has not adhered to recommended treatment, even without evidence Black patients are less compliant than other patients. Being labeled noncompliant can have grave health consequences; providers are less likely to treat pain aggressively when they consider a patient noncompliant and, …

The Minimalist Alternative To Abolitionism: Focusing On The Non-Dangerous Many, Christopher Slobogin Professor Of Law

Vanderbilt Law Review

In "The Dangerous Few: Taking Seriously Prison Abolition and Its Skeptics," published in the Harvard Law Review, Thomas Frampton proffers four reasons why those who want to abolish prisons should not budge from their position even for offenders who are considered dangerous. This Essay demonstrates why a criminal law minimalist approach to prisons and police is preferable to abolition, not just when dealing with the dangerous few but also as a means of protecting the non-dangerous many. A minimalist regime can radically reduce reliance on both prisons and police, without the loss in crime prevention capacity and legitimacy that is …

The Impact Of Banning Confidential Settlements On Discrimination Dispute Resolutio, Blair D. Bullock -- Assistant Professor Of Law, Joni Hersch -- Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor Of Law And Economics

Vanderbilt Law Review

The #MeToo movement exposed how workplace harassment plagues employment in the United States. Several states responded by passing legislation aimed at curbing harassment and employment discrimination in the workplace. One of the most common legislative efforts was to ban confidentiality provisions in certain settlement agreements. These bans, in part, attempted to stop "secret settlements" by shining light on workplace discrimination and exposing serial harassers as a means to motivate firms to actively deter workplace discrimination.

But do bans on confidentiality agreements deter the bad act? For these laws to have a deterrent effect, claims must be revealed in a public …

Access To Justice For Black Inventors, Jordana R. Goodman Assistant Professor Of Law, Khamal Patterson

Vanderbilt Law Review

To receive a patent, an inventor must meet certain inventive and procedural standards. Their invention must be novel, nonobvious, and written in such a way that any person skilled in the inventive subject can make and use the invention without undue experimentation. This process is far from objective.

An inventor is not always communicating within their own social circle. An inventor is required to communicate their invention so that a patent examiner believes a person having ordinary skill in the art ("PHOSITA") would recognize the invention as nonobvious. Moreover, a fictitious skilled person must be able to make and use …

Eavesdropping: The Forgotten Public Nuisance In The Age Of Alexa, Julia Keller

Vanderbilt Law Review

Always-listening devices have sparked new concerns about privacy while evading regulation, but a potential solution has existed for hundreds of years: public nuisance.

Public nuisance has been stretched to serve as a basis of liability for some of the most prominent cases of modern mass-tort litigation, such as suits against opioid and tobacco manufacturers for creating products that endanger public health. While targeting conduct that arguably interferes with a right common to the public, this use of public nuisance extends far beyond the original understanding of the doctrine. Public nuisance has not been applied, however, to another prominent contemporary issue: …

The Financialization Of Frequent Flyer Miles: Calling For Consumer Protection, Ari Goldfine

Vanderbilt Law Review

Airlines' frequent flyer programs operate more like a monetary system, with points as a form of currency, than a typical discount or rewards plan. In fact, airlines' power over points is even more extensive than that of a central bank over currency beyond simply determining how many points are in circulation, airlines also control the value of points at redemption, how many points consumers can accumulate, and when points expire. This financialized form of frequent flyer programs has proven to be lucrative. For the Big Four airlines, frequent flyer programs are worth markedly more than the business of providing air …

Avoiding A "Nine-Headed Hydra": Intervention As A Matter Of Right By Legislators In Federal Lawsuits After Berger, Taylor Lawing -- J.D. Candidate

Vanderbilt Law Review

Heightened political polarization across the United States has resulted in the increased use of Rule 24(a) intervention as a matter of right by elected legislators in federal litigation concerning state law. Because states differ in their approaches to intervention, with only some states expressly granting intervention in state matters, lower federal courts have been tasked with evaluating motions to intervene by reconciling Rule 24(a)'s requirements with state statutes, which poses challenging questions concerning Rule 24. This Note aims to provide lower courts with a reimagined standard for evaluating motions to intervene from state legislators that considers the administrative, political, and …

The Harms Of Heien: Pulling Back The Curtain On The Court's Search And Seizure Doctrine, Steven M. Goldstein -- Professor Of Law

Vanderbilt Law Review

In Heien v. North Carolina, the Supreme Court held that individuals can be seized on the basis of reasonable police mistakes of law. In an opinion authored by Chief Justice Roberts, the eight-Justice majority held that the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of “unreasonable” seizures does not bar legally mistaken seizures because “[t]o be reasonable is not to be perfect.” Concurring, Justice Kagan, joined by Justice Ginsburg, emphasized that judicial condonation of police mistakes of law should be “exceedingly rare.” In a solo dissent, Justice Sotomayor fairly “wonder[ed] why an innocent citizen should be made to shoulder the burden of being seized …

The Harms Of Heien: Pulling Back The Curtain On The Court's Search And Seizure Doctrin, Wayne A. Logan -- Professor

Vanderbilt Law Review

In Heien v. North Carolina, the Supreme Court held that individuals can be seized on the basis of reasonable police mistakes of law. In an opinion authored by Chief Justice Roberts, the eight-Justice majority held that the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of "unreasonable" seizures does not bar legally mistaken seizures because "[t]o be reasonable is not to be perfect." Concurring, Justice Kagan, joined by Justice Ginsburg, emphasized that judicial condonation of police mistakes of law should be "exceedingly rare." In a solo dissent, Justice Sotomayor fairly "wonder[ed] why an innocent citizen should be made to shoulder the burden of being seized …

Models And Limits Of Federal Rule Of Evidence 609 Reform, Anna Roberts

Vanderbilt Law Review

A Symposium focusing on Reimagining the Rules of Evidence at 50 makes one turn to the federal rule that governs one's designated topic--prior conviction impeachment--and think about how that rule could be altered. Part I of this Article does just that, drawing inspiration from state models to propose ways in which the multiple criticisms of the existing federal rule might be addressed. But recent scholarship by Alice Ristroph, focusing on ways in which criminal law scholars talk to their students about "the rules," gives one pause. Ristroph identifies a pedagogical tendency to erase the many humans who turn rules into …

How Machines Reveal The Gaps In Evidence Law, Andrea Roth -- Barry Tarlow Chancellor's Chair In Criminal Justice And Professor Of Law

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Symposium asks participants to reimagine the Federal Rules of Evidence on the fiftieth anniversary of their effective date. As part of that conversation, this short Essay argues that the Rules of Evidence contain critical gaps in terms of empowering litigants to meaningfully challenge the credibility of evidence. Specifically, the increasing use of machine-generated proof has made clear that evidence law does not offer sufficiently meaningful opportunities to scrutinize conveyances of information whose flaws cannot be exposed through cross-examination. These underscrutinized conveyances include machine-generated output, information conveyed by animals, and statements made by absent hearsay declarants. Even for some witnesses …

Introduction, Edward K. Cheng

Vanderbilt Law Review

Prior to the eighteenth century, cartographers would often fill uncharted areas of maps with sea monsters, other artwork, or even rank speculation-a phenomenon labeled "horror vacui," or fear of empty spaces. For example, in Paolo Forlani's world map of 1565, a yet- to-be-discovered southern continent was depicted with anticipated mountain chains and animals. The possible explanations for horror vacui are varied, but one reason may have been a desire "to hide [the mapmakers'] ignorance." Not until "maps began to be thought of as more purely scientific instruments . . . [did] cartographers . . . restrain their concern about spaces …

Ignorance Of The Rules Of Omission: An Essay On Privilege Law, Rebecca Wexler

Vanderbilt Law Review

Evidentiary privileges--that is, rules that empower people to withhold evidence from legal proceedings-are one thread in a mesh of secrecy powers that control the flow of information in society. They are part and parcel of the laws, rules, norms, and practicalities that determine who can conceal and who can compel, that allocate power based on access to knowledge and its opposite. Despite the significance of privileges and of the harms that they produce, our understanding of this body of law has profound gaps.5 The questions posed above turn out to be more challenging than they might at first appear. Notwithstanding …

One Size Does Not Fit All: Alternatives To The Federal Rules Of Evidence, Henry Zhuhao Wang

Vanderbilt Law Review

The Federal Rules of Evidence have been so successful that many people equate them to the whole field of evidence law. But this is a false equivalence. Our world is complicated, diversified, and dynamic. So, too, is evidence law, which is like a rainforest in which the Federal Rules are simply the largest tree, not a forest unto themselves. In fact, the Federal Rules of Evidence are limited in their applicability due to three fundamental assumptions: the presence of a jury trial, an adversarial process, and witness oral testimony. The universe of dispute resolution, however, extends far beyond a contour …

On Proving Mabrus And Zorgs, Michael S. Pardo

Vanderbilt Law Review

An unfortunate disconnect exists in modern evidence scholarship. On one hand, a rich literature has explored the process of legal proof in general and legal standards of proof in particular. Call this the "macro level" of legal proof. On the other hand, a rich literature has explored the admissibility rules that regulate the admission or exclusion of particular types of evidence (such as hearsay, character evidence, expert testimony, and so on). Call this the "micro level" of legal proof. Little attention, however, has focused on how the issues discussed in these two distinct strands of evidence scholarship intertwine. One important …

Binding Hercules: A Proposal For Bench Trials, Maggie Wittlin -- Associate Professor

Vanderbilt Law Review

If you were a federal judge presiding over a bench trial, you probably would not want the Federal Rules of Evidence to apply to you. Sure, you might want to be insulated from privileged information. But you are, no doubt, capable of cool-headed, rational reasoning, and you have a realistic understanding of how the world works; if you got evidence that was unreliable or easy to overvalue, you could handle it appropriately. But surely, you would have the same desire if you were a juror--it is not your position as a judge that makes you want all the relevant evidence. …

The Superfluous Rules Of Evidence, Jeffrey Bellin -- Professor Of Law

Vanderbilt Law Review

There are few American legal codifications as successful as the Federal Rules of Evidence. But this success masks the project's uncertain beginnings. The drafters of the Federal Rules worried that lawmakers would not adopt the new rules and that judges would not follow them. As a result, they included at least thirty rules of evidence that do not, in fact, alter the admissibility of evidence. Instead, these rules: (1) market the rules project, and (2) guide judges away from anticipated errors in applying the (other) nonsuperfluous rules.

Given the superfluous rules' covert mission, it should not be surprising that the …

"Pics Or It Didn't Happen" And "Show Me The Receipts": A Folk Evidentiary Rule, Timothy Lau

Vanderbilt Law Review

"Pics or It Didn't Happen," "Show Me the Receipts," and related refrains are frequently encountered in online discussion threads today. They are typically invoked to demand corroboration in support of a claim or to declare from the outset that a claim is supported by some sort of proof In many ways, they are the functional counterpart of legal evidentiary objections in online discussions. They embody a folk evidentiary rule, democratically and organically developed by the people.

The topic of "Pics or It Didn't Happen" is much broader than can be covered in a symposium piece. As such, this Article seeks …

Evidence-Based Hearsay, Justin Sevier -- Professor Of Litigation

Vanderbilt Law Review

The hearsay rule initially appears straightforward and sensible. It forbids witnesses from repeating secondhand, untested gossip in court, and who among us prefers to resolve legal disputes through untested gossip? Nonetheless, the rule's unpopularity in the legal profession is well-known and far-reaching. It is almost cliche to say that the rule confounds law students, confuses practicing attorneys, and vexes trial judges, who routinely make incorrect calls at trial with respect to hearsay admissibility. The rule fares no better in the halls of legal academia. Although defenses exist, scholars have unleashed a parade of pejoratives at the rule over the years, …

A New Baseline For Character Evidence, Julia Simon-Kerr -- Professor Of Law

Vanderbilt Law Review

Perhaps no rules of evidence are as contested as the rules governing character evidence. To ward off the danger of a fact finder's mistaking evidence of character for evidence of action, the rules exclude much contextual information about the people at the center of the proceeding. This prohibition on character propensity evidence is a bedrock principle of American law. Yet despite its centrality, it is uncertain of both content and application. Contributing to this uncertainty is a definitional lacuna. Although a logical first question in thinking about character evidence is how to define it, the Federal Rules of Evidence have …