Law Commons^™

Trick Or Treat: The Ethics Of Mediator Manipulation, Jim Coben, Lela P. Love

Articles

Much of what good mediators do can be characterized as “helpful interventions” that assist the parties towards legitimate goals such as a better understanding, a platform for developing options, and (where the parties choose) an agreement or settlement. However, all such “helpful interventions” are inevitably "manipulative," in the sense that the mediator is, often unilaterally, making “moves” with profound impact on the parties’ bargaining. To evaluate the ethics of any individual move, the authors propose asking two questions: 1) does the move further or help a legitimate party or process goal that advances party self-determination in decision-making; and 2) is …

Welfare As Happiness, John Bronsteen, Christopher Buccafusco, Jonathan Masur

Articles

Perhaps the most important goal of law and policy is improving people’s lives. But what constitutes improvement? What is quality of life, and how can it be measured? In previous articles, we have used insights from the new field of hedonic psychology to analyze central questions in civil and criminal justice, and we now apply those insights to a broader inquiry: how can the law make life better? The leading accounts of human welfare in law, economics, and philosophy are preference-satisfaction - getting what one wants - and objective list approaches - possessing an enumerated set of capabilities. This Article …

Looking Beyond Full Relationship Recognition For Couples Regardless Of Sex: Abolition, Alternatives, And/Or Functionalism, Edward Stein

Articles

In the context of recent accomplishments in the quest for full marriage equality for same-sex couples, this article considers three proposals for reform to the law of adult domestic relations: (i) the abolition of the legal institution of marriage; (ii) the development of a broad “menu” of alternative forms of relationship recognition in addition to marriage; and (iii) the embracing of a functionalist approach to relationship recognition whereby relationships that share significant functional attributes with marriages are, in certain ways, given the same legal treatment as marriages. The article contends that advocates and theoreticians should strive for more than just …

Family Values In The Jewish Tradition, J. David Bleich

Articles

In Family Values in the Jewish Tradition, Professor J. David Bleich presents Judaism as a religion of law. He describes the family unit, "both as a social unit and as a legal institution," and how it helps to provide comfort, companionship, and stability. He discusses the role of reproduction within the family unit, artificial insemination, and the homosexual act (not the homosexual as a person). Professor Bleich concludes with a discussion of the phrase, "be fruitful and multiply." He notes that this phrase is understood as both a commandment and a blessing.

Public Interest(S) And Fourth Amendment Enforcement, Alexander A. Reinert

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Fourth Amendment events generate substantial controversy among the public and in the legal community. Yet there is orthodoxy to Fourth Amendment thinking, reflected in the near universal assumption by courts and commentators alike that the amendment creates only tension between privately held individual liberties and public-regarding interests in law enforcement and security. On this account, courts are faced with a clear choice when mediating Fourth Amendment conflicts: side with the individual by declaring a particular intrusion to be in violation of the Constitution or side with the public by permitting the intrusion. Scholarly literature and court decisions are accordingly littered …

The Technology Of Law, Bernard J. Hibbitts

Articles

This paper argues that contemporary fascination with the law of technology (IP, cyberlaw, etc.) has led us to overlook the fundamental impact of the "technology of law," and offers suggestions for creating "neterate" lawyers more comfortable with and cognizant of technology itself. The author describes how the legal news service JURIST implements many of these suggestions and provides a unique learning experience for its law student staffers.

Identitarian Violence And Identitarian Politics: Elections And Governance In Iraq, Haider Ala Hamoudi

Articles

This Essay, originally published in a 2010 issue of the Harvard International Law Journal (Online), maintains that it is a mistake to ask whether or not the United States was wise to have "allowed" elections in Iraq as early as it did following its overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime in 2003. Such a question presumes an absence of domestic agency that was certainly not the case in Iraq, and is probably not the case in any modern society under occupation. Domestic demands coming from domestic forces seeking to shore up their own power base almost necessitated the outcome of …

Picture This: Body Worn Video Devices ('Head Cams') As Tools For Ensuring Fourth Amendment Compliance By Police, David A. Harris

Articles

A new technology has emerged with the potential to increase police compliance with the law and to increase officers’ accountability for their conduct. Called “body worn video” (BWV) or “head cams,” these devices are smaller, lighter versions of the video and audio recording systems mounted on the dash boards of police cars. These systems are small enough that they consist of something the size and shape of a cellular telephone earpiece, and are worn by police officers the same way. Recordings are downloaded directly from the device into a central computer system for storage and indexing, which protects them from …

Veil-Piercing, Peter B. Oh

Articles

From its inception veil-piercing has been a scourge on corporate law. Exactly when the veil of limited liability can and will be circumvented to reach into a shareholder’s own assets has befuddled courts, litigants, and scholars alike. And the doctrine has been bedeviled by empirical evidence of a chasm between the theory and practice of veil-piercing; notably, veil-piercing claims inexplicably seem to prevail more often in Contract than Tort, a finding that flouts the engrained distinction between voluntary and involuntary creditors.

With a dataset of 2908 cases from 1658 to 2006 this study presents the most comprehensive portrait of veil-piercing …

Transnational Class Actions And Interjurisdictional Preclusion, Rhonda Wasserman

Articles

As global markets expand and trans-border disputes multiply, American courts are pressed to certify transnational class actions -- i.e., class actions brought on behalf of large numbers of foreign citizens or against foreign defendants. While the Supreme Court's recent decision in Morrison v. National Australia Bank Ltd. is likely to reduce the number of "foreign-cubed" or "f-cubed" securities fraud class actions filed in the United States (at least in the short term), it is unlikely to inhibit the filing of transnational class actions involving securities listed on domestic stock exchanges, transnational class actions raising claims that arise under federal laws …

Mapping Online Privacy, Jacqueline D. Lipton

Articles

Privacy scholars have recently outlined difficulties in applying existing concepts of personal privacy to the maturing Internet. With Web 2.0 technologies, more people have more opportunities to post information about themselves and others online, often with scant regard for individual privacy. Shifting notions of 'reasonable expectations of privacy' in the context of blogs, wikis, and online social networks create challenges for privacy regulation. Courts and commentators struggle with Web 2.0 privacy incursions without the benefit of a clear regulatory framework. This article offers a map of privacy that might help delineate at least the outer boundaries of Web 2.0 privacy. …

Bad Faith In Cyberspace: Grounding Domain Name Theory In Trademark, Property And Restitution, Jacqueline D. Lipton

Articles

The year 2009 marks the tenth anniversary of domain name regulation under the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) and the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). Adopted to combat cybersquatting, these rules left a confused picture of domain name theory in their wake. Early cybersquatters registered Internet domain names corresponding with others’ trademarks to sell them for a profit. However, this practice was quickly and easily contained. New practices arose in domain name markets, not initially contemplated by the drafters of the ACPA and the UDRP. One example is clickfarming – using domain names to generate revenues from click-on …

Standing, On Appeal, Amy J. Wildermuth, Lincoln L. Davies

Articles

Scholarly criticism of standing doctrine is hardly new, but a core problem with standing jurisprudence remains overlooked: How do parties challenging administrative decisions factually prove that they have standing on appeal when appellate courts normally do not conduct fact finding? This Article attempts to tackle that problem. It combines a four-pronged normative procedural justice model with an empirical study of appellate cases to conclude that (1) although this issue arises in a relatively narrow set of cases, the number of such cases is growing and (2) existing judicial solutions to the problem are deficient. Thus, after exploring several options — …

Legal Interpretation: The Window Of The Text As Transparent, Opaque, Or Translucent, George H. Taylor

Articles

It is a common metaphor that the text is a window onto the world that it depicts. In legal interpretation, the metaphor has been developed in two ways – the legal text as transparent or opaque – and the Article proposes a third – the legal text as translucent. The claim that the legal text is transparent has been associated with more liberal methodological approaches. According to this view (often articulated by critics), the legal text does not markedly delimit meaning. Delimitation comes from the interpreters. By contrast, stress on the opacity of the legal text comes from those who …

Promoting The Rule Of Law: Cooperation And Competition In The Eu-Us Relationship, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

Both the United States and the European Union fund programs designed to develop the rule of law in transition countries. Despite significant expenditures in this area, however, neither has developed either a clear definition of what is meant by the rule of law or a catalogue of programs that can result in coordination of rule of law efforts. This article is the result of a presentation at a May 2010 policy conference at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, at which U.S. and EU government officials, scholars, and practitioners discussed the concept of rule of law and efforts to …

Foreword: On Publishing Anonymously, Anthony C. Infanti

Articles

In this foreword to the fall 2010 issue of the Pittsburgh Tax Review, I explain the troubling set of circumstances that led to our decision to publish one of the articles anonymously. All of the articles in this issue share a focus on suggestions for state and local tax reform in Pennsylvania. The circumstances surrounding the decision to publish this one article anonymously raise a host of questions regarding the extent to which tax professionals are free to make suggestions for tax reform without being subject to employer censorship.

Decentralizing Family: An Inclusive Proposal For Individual Tax Filing In The United States, Anthony C. Infanti

Articles

The debate in the United States over individual versus joint federal income tax filing is at something of a crossroads. For decades, progressive - and, particularly, feminist - scholars have urged us to abolish the joint return in favor of individual filing. On the rare occasion when scholars have described what such an individual filing system might look like, the focus has been on the ways in which the traditional family must be accommodated in an individual filing system. These descriptions generally do not take into account - let alone remedy - the tax system’s ongoing failure to address the …

Taxing Civil Rights Gains, Anthony C. Infanti

Articles

In this article, I take a novel approach to the question of what constitutes a "tax." I argue that the unique burdens placed on same-sex couples by the federal and state "defense of marriage" acts (the DOMAs) constitute a tax on gay and lesbian families.

Classifying the DOMAs as a "tax" has important substantive and rhetorical consequences. As a tax, the DOMAs are subject to the same constitutional restrictions as other taxes. This opens them to challenge under the federal constitution's direct tax clauses and the uniformity clauses present in many state constitutions. Where such constitutional challenges are unavailable or …

Reply: The Complexity Of Commons, Michael J. Madison, Brett M. Frischmann, Katherine J. Strandburg

Articles

Constructing Commons in the Cultural Environment, and responses to that article by Professors Thráinn Eggertsson, Wendy Gordon, Gregg Macey, Robert Merges, Elinor Ostrom, and Lawrence Solum. This short Reply comments briefly on each of those responses.

Ornamental Repugnancy: Identitarian Islam And The Iraqi Constitution, Haider Ala Hamoudi

Articles

Nearly six years after the enactment of Iraq’s final constitution, the Federal Supreme Court of Iraq has yet to render a single ruling respecting the conformity of any law to the “settled rulings of Islam” despite being empowered to do precisely that under Article 2 of the Iraqi Constitution. This so-called repugnancy clause is swiftly devolving from a matter that was of some importance during constitutional negotiations into one that is more symbolic than real – an assertion of identity, primarily of the Islamic variety (though when combined with Article 92, to some extent of the Shi’i Islamic variety) – …

Exporting Legal Education: Lessons Learned From Efforts In Transition Countries, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

A convergence of inward and outward-looking processes in US law schools creates both risk and potential reward in the development of legal education. As law faculties engage in the current process of changing the traditional law school curriculum, they should carefully coordinate a desire for internal goals with an understanding of external impact, realizing that this process is likely to affect not just US law schools, but legal education across the globe. Changes in the curriculum at US law schools should be responsive, not only to concerns about the legal marketplace in the United States, but also to the impact …

Law Enforcement And Intelligence Gathering In Muslim And Immigrant Communities After 9/11, David A. Harris

Articles

Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, law enforcement agencies have actively sought partnerships with Muslim communities in the U.S. Consistent with community-based policing, these partnerships are designed to persuade members of these communities to share information about possible extremist activity. These cooperative efforts have borne fruit, resulting in important anti-terrorism prosecutions. But during the past several years, law enforcement has begun to use another tactic simultaneously: the FBI and some police departments have placed informants in mosques and other religious institutions to gather intelligence. The government justifies this by asserting that it must take a pro-active stance in order …

Copyright’S Twilight Zone: Digital Copyright Lessons From The Vampire Blogosphere, Jacqueline D. Lipton

Articles

Web 2.0 technologies, characterized by user-generated content, raise new challenges for copyright law. Online interactions involving reproductions of copyrighted works in blogs, online fan fiction, and online social networks do not comfortably fit existing copyright paradigms. It is unclear whether participants in Web 2.0 forums are creating derivative works, making legitimate fair uses of copyright works, or engaging in acts of digital copyright piracy and plagiarism. As online conduct becomes more interactive, copyright laws are less effective in creating clear signals about proscribed conduct. This article examines the application of copyright law to Web 2.0 technologies. It suggests that social …

Doma And The Happy Family: A Lesson In Irony, Rhonda Wasserman

Articles

In enacting the Defense of Marriage Act, Congress chose to protect heterosexual marriage because of its “deep and abiding interest in encouraging responsible procreation and child-rearing. Simply put, government has an interest in marriage because it has an interest in children.” Ironically, DOMA may harm, rather than protect, the interests of some children – i.e., the children of gay and lesbian couples.

Both state and federal law reflect the belief that children are better off being raised by two parents in an intact family. This belief is reflected in the marital presumption of paternity, which presumes that a married woman’s …

The Death Of Islamic Law, Haider Ala Hamoudi

Articles

That lawmaking in many modern Muslim nation states appears to give rather short shrift to shari’a, seemingly ignoring it in all areas save the law of the family and replacing it elsewhere with European transplanted law, has been discussed. That the Muslim world is replete with political institutions and leaders that seek a greater role than this for the shari’a in the affairs of the state is obvious to anyone even faintly familiar with the region.

However, left undiscussed is the fact that the Islamist, who derives his authority precisely on the basis of returning sovereignty to God in all …

The Wisdom Of Crowds? Groupthink And Nonprofit Governance, Melanie B. Leslie

Articles

Scandals involving nonprofit boards and conflicts of interest continue to receive considerable public attention. Earlier this year, for example, musician Wyclef Jean's Yele Haiti charity became the target of intense criticism after the charity disclosed that it had regularly transacted business with Jean and entities controlled by Jean and other directors. Although scandals caused by self-dealing undermine public confidence in the charitable sector, they continue to erupt. Why do charitable boards sanction transactions with insiders?

This Article argues that much of the blame lies with the law itself. Because fiduciary duty law is currently structured as a set of fuzzy …