Law Commons^™

68. Increasing Maltreated And Nonmaltreated Children’S Recall Disclosures Of A Minor Transgression: The Effects Of Back-Channel Utterances, A Promise To Tell The Truth And A Post-Recall Putative Confession., Kelly Mcwilliams, Stacia N. Stolzenberg, Shanna Williams, Thomas D. Lyon

Thomas D. Lyon

68. Increasing Maltreated And Nonmaltreated Children’S Recall Disclosures Of A Minor Transgression: The Effects Of Back-Channel Utterances, A Promise To Tell The Truth And A Post-Recall Putative Confession., Kelly Mcwilliams, Stacia N. Stolzenberg, Shanna Williams, Thomas D. Lyon

Thomas D. Lyon

The Web Of Legal Protections For Participants In Genomic Research, Leslie E. Wolf, Erin Fuse Brown, Ryan Kerr, Genevieve Razick, Gregory Tanner, Brett Duvall, Sakinah Jones, Jack Brackney, Tatiana Posada

Leslie E. Wolf

The identification and arrest of the Golden State Killer using DNA uploaded to an ancestry database occurred shortly before recruitment for the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) All of Us Study commenced, with a goal of enrolling and collecting DNA, health, and lifestyle information from one million Americans. It also highlighted the need to ensure prospective research participants that their confidentiality will be protected and their materials used appropriately. But there are questions about how well current law protects against these privacy risks. This article is the first to consider comprehensively and simultaneously all the federal and state laws offering …

The Web Of Legal Protections For Participants In Genomic Research, Leslie E. Wolf, Erin Fuse Brown, Ryan Kerr, Genevieve Razick, Gregory Tanner, Brett Duvall, Sakinah Jones, Jack Brackney, Tatiana Posada

Erin C. Fuse Brown

The identification and arrest of the Golden State Killer using DNA uploaded to an ancestry database occurred shortly before recruitment for the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) All of Us Study commenced, with a goal of enrolling and collecting DNA, health, and lifestyle information from one million Americans. It also highlighted the need to ensure prospective research participants that their confidentiality will be protected and their materials used appropriately. But there are questions about how well current law protects against these privacy risks. This article is the first to consider comprehensively and simultaneously all the federal and state laws offering …

Workplace Bullying, Emotional Abuse And Harrassment In Fire Departments, John C. Griffith, Donna L. Roberts

John Griffith

Racial Indirection, Yuvraj Joshi

Yuvraj Joshi

The Ethics Of Using Cloud-Based Services And Products, Darla W. Jackson

Darla W. Jackson

No abstract provided.

The Ethics Of Using Cloud-Based Services And Products, Darla W. Jackson, Kenton Brice

Darla W. Jackson

No abstract provided.

Exploring Places Of Street Drug Dealing In A Downtown Area In Brazil: An Analysis Of The Reliability Of Google Street View In International Criminological Research, Elenice De Souza Oliveira, Ko-Hsin Hsu

Elenice De Souza Oliveira

This study assesses the reliability of Google Street View (GSV) in auditing environmental features that help create hotbeds of drug dealing in Belo Horizonte, one of Brazil’s largest cities. Based on concepts of “crime generators” and “crime enablers,” a set of 40 items were selected using arrest data related to drug activities for the period between 2007 and 2011. These items served to develop a GSV data collection instrument used to observe features of 135 street segments that were identified as drug dealing hot spots in downtown Belo Horizonte. The study employs an intra-class correlation (ICC) statistics as a measure …

Social Media: The Attorney’S Best “Friend” When Investigating Jurors, Reginia Judge

Reginia Judge

No abstract provided.

Cut! Arguments Against Televising Trials, Reginia Judge

Reginia Judge

No abstract provided.

The Erie Doctrine In Equity, John T. Cross

John Cross

No abstract provided.

The Constitutional Federal Question In The Lower Federal Courts Of The United States And Canada, John T. Cross

John Cross

No abstract provided.

Trademark Issues Relating To Digitalized Flavor, John T. Cross

John Cross

Over the past three decades, most people have become accustomed to dealing with music, film, photography, and other expressive media stored in digital format. However, while great strides have been made in digitalizing what we see and hear, there has been far less progress in digitalizing the other senses. This lack of progress is especially evident for the chemical senses of smell and taste. However, all this may soon change. Recently, several groups of researchers have commenced various projects that could store odors and flavors in a digital format, and replicate them for humans.

Reconciling The "Moral Rights" Of Authors With The First Amendment Right Of Free Speech, John T. Cross

John Cross

The article concludes that the First Amendment does not significantly limit the enforcement of those moral rights recognized by state and federal law. Several features of moral rights laws support this conclusion. First, many acts that infringe moral rights do not qualify as speech, and therefore receive no First Amendment protection. For example, the droit de suite, or resale right, is clearly constitutional under this rationale, as it involves no speech whatsoever. Second, even when the offending act is speech, most moral rights laws can be justified, depending on the circumstances, by one or more of several arguments. Indeed, many …

Dead Ends And Dirty Secrets: Legal Treatment Of Negative Information, 25 J. Marshall J. Computer & Info. L. 619 (2008), John T. Cross

John Cross

This article discusses the process of innovation and releasing so-called negative information to help others in the process to innovate. The article focuses on patent law and asks the questions: Why do people innovate? Does the legal system really reflect how the process of innovation actually occurs?

Age Verification In The 21st Century: Swiping Away Your Privacy, 23 J. Marshall J. Computer & Info. L. 363 (2005), John T. Cross

John Cross

Today a lot of private businesses have adopted the practice of driver's license swiping where proof of age or security issues arise. This practice has beneficial uses for both private entities, in identifying underage persons and those with fake identification, and law enforcement. However, the problem arise when the private sector, businesses are not using the information to merely identify underage customers or those with fake identification but store the information encoded on the barcode in a computer database. No federal laws and very few state laws regulate the collection and use of this information while the private sector is …

Competition Law And Copyright Misuse, John T. Cross, Peter K. Yu

John Cross

In the past two decades, copyright protection throughout the world has been greatly expanded to respond to challenges posed by new communications technologies and copyrightable subject matters. As protection has increased, the growing power of copyright owners has also led to market abuses that stifle competition and innovation. In response to these abuses, courts, litigants, policy makers, and commentators have increasingly embraced competition law, the doctrines of copyright misuse and unclean hands, and tort law concepts as counter-balancing tools. This article discusses four different types of abuse that has occurred in the copyright area and examines the various legal doctrines …

Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due: Revisiting The Doctrine Of Reverse Passing Off In Trademark Law, John T. Cross

John Cross

During the past twenty years, courts have increasingly come to accept a cause of action for "reverse passing off." Unlike the more typical case of passing off, reverse passing off occurs when a defendant sells a product manufactured by a plaintiff under the defendant's own mark. Despite this difference, courts regularly invoke federal and state trademark laws, including the Lanham Act, to give the plaintiff a right to recover. This Article challenges that conclusion. It argues that the Lanham Act does not actually support a cause of action against a defendant who engages in reverse passing off. In addition, most …

The Quantified Self Movement: Legal Challenges And Benefits Of Personal Biometric Data Tracking, Timothy S. Hall

Timothy S. Hall

This article explores some of the potential pitfalls associated with collection of detailed individual biometric or health-related information, and demonstrates that current laws and regulations are not well designed to protect users of these devices and apps from unauthorized use or misuse of their data. Health information is among the most sensitive, intimate, and potentially damaging personal information one may possess, and health policymakers have made health information privacy a priority for decades for good reason. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) was one of the major health policy legislative achievements of the 1990s. However, HIPAA …

Regulation Of Payday Loans: Misguided?, Paige Marta Skiba

Paige Marta Skiba

Since payday lenders came on the scene in 1990s, regulation of their "predatory" practices has been swift and often severe. Fourteen states now ban payday loans outright. From an economist's perspective, high-interest, short-term, small loans need not be a bad thing. Payday credit can help borrowers "smooth" consumption, unequivocally improving welfare as consumers borrow from future good times to help cover current shortfalls. These benefits of credit can accrue even at typical payday loan interest rates of 300%-600% APR. The question of whether payday credit actually assists borrowers in this way is an empirical one. In this Article, I review …

Dude, Where's My Car Title?: The Law, Behavior, And Economics Of Title Lending Markets, Paige Marta Skiba, Kathryn Fritzdixon, Jim Hawkins

Paige Marta Skiba

Millions of credit-constrained borrowers turn to title loans to meet their liquidity needs. Legislatures and regulators have debated how to best regulate these transactions, but surprisingly, we still know very little about the customers who use title loans. This Article reports findings from the first large-scale academic study of title lending customers. We surveyed over 400 title lending customers across three states and obtained information about customers’ demographic and behavioral characteristics.

Based on the results of our survey and guided by insights from behavioral economics, this Article seeks to reframe the title lending debate. Instead of focusing on the risks …

Information Asymmetries In Consumer Credit Markets: Evidence From Payday Lending, Paige Marta Skiba, Will Dobbie

Paige Marta Skiba

Information asymmetries are prominent in theory but difficult to estimate. This paper exploits discontinuities in loan eligibility to test for moral hazard and adverse selection in the payday loan market. Regression discontinuity and regression kink approaches suggest that payday borrowers are less likely to default on larger loans. A $50 larger payday loan leads to a 17 to 33 percent drop in the probability of default. Conversely, there is economically and statistically significant adverse selection into larger payday loans when loan eligibility is held constant. Payday borrowers who choose a $50 larger loan are 16 to 47 percent more likely …

Pawnshops, Behavioral Economics, And Self Regulation, Paige Marta Skiba, Susan Payne Carter

Paige Marta Skiba

Pawnbroking is the oldest source of credit. There is growing public interest in day-to-day pawnbroking operations, as evidenced by the popularity of reality shows such as “Pawn Stars” and “Hardcore Pawn.” Television viewers’ curiosity about an old credit institution may be due to the fact that 7% of all U.S. households have used pawn credit. Although pawnshops predate biblical times, researchers know surprisingly little about this ancient form of banking and its customers. We fill this gap by documenting detailed information on pawnshop loan repayment and default, and by discussing how pawnshop borrowers’ behavior is consistent with various behavioral economics …

Consumer Litigation Funding: Just Another Form Of Payday Lending?, Paige Marta Skiba, Jean Xiao

Paige Marta Skiba

This article provides a side-by-side comparison of payday lending and consumer litigation funding in order to aid policymakers. Funding has similarities with payday lending because they are both alternative financial services, involve high interest rates, and cater to customers who need money for living expenses. However, they differ in ways that regulators should recognize. Many justify bans on payday lending by pointing to the fact that millions of borrowers every year are getting stuck in an inescapable cycle of interest payments. While legal finance has real costs, funding’s nonrecourse nature prevents consumers from getting stuck in a cyclical repayment of …

Sexting And Freedom Of Expression: A Comparative Approach, Joanne Sweeny

JoAnne Sweeny

No abstract provided.

Creating A More Dangerous Branch: How The United Kingdom’S Human Rights Act Has Empowered The Judiciary And Changed The Way The British Government Creates Law, Dr. Joanne Sweeny

JoAnne Sweeny

No abstract provided.

Trapped In Public: The Regulation Of Street Harassment And Cyber-Harassment Under The Captive Audience Doctrine, Joanne Sweeny

JoAnne Sweeny

No abstract provided.

Do Sexting Prosecutions Violate Teenagers' Constitutional Rights?, Joanne Sweeny

JoAnne Sweeny

The media has recently been highlighting a rash of prosecutions of teenagers who engage in "sexting"--sending nude or sexually explicit images of themselves or their peers--under child pornography laws. These prosecutions have led to mass criticism for threatening teens with long prison terms and registration as sex offenders for activities that are perceived to be relatively innocent. Many, if not most, of these sexting teens are legally permitted to engage in sexual activities through their states' statutory rape laws, which leads to an absurd situation in which teens are permitted to engage in sex but not photograph it. This mismatch …

Breaking Through Gridlock To Protect Human Rights: The Case For A Congressional Human Rights Committee, Joanne Sweeny

JoAnne Sweeny

Congressional gridlock does more than frustrate the populace; it has far-reaching effects, particularly for human rights abuses. From Ferguson, Missouri to Flint, Michigan, government abuses of power and civil rights violations increasingly concern those within the United States. Existing executive bodies, although able to investigate, lack the political power to force Congress to act to remedy these abuses and neither Congress nor state legislatures have offered any solutions. In response, activists have begun to approach international bodies such as the United Nations to voice their concerns, which has also allowed them to re-characterize their plights as human rights issues. If …