Law Commons^™

Interdisciplinary Methods In Water Resources, Maureen Laflin, Barbara Cosens

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No abstract provided.

The United States Court Of Appeals For Veterans Claims: Has It Mastered Chevron's Step Zero?, Linda Jellum

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No abstract provided.

Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: Reconciling Brown V. Gardner's Presumption That Interpretive Doubt Be Resolved In Veterans' Favor With Chevron, Linda Jellum

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In Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., the United States Supreme Court held that agencies should determine the meaning of ambiguous statutes. But in the veterans law case Brown v. Gardner, the Supreme Court directed lower courts to resolve interpretive doubt in ambiguous statutes in favor of veterans. Which interpretation controls when a statute is ambiguous-the agency's reasonable interpretation or the veteran's interpretation? To date, none of the courts faced with this conflict have resolved this question clearly or definitively; indeed, the United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims recently asked the Supreme Court …

But That Is Absurd! Why Specific Absurdity Undermines Textualism, Linda Jellum

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No abstract provided.

Protection Of "Innocent Lawbreakers": Striking The Right Balance In The Private Enforcement Of The Anti "Junk Fax" Provisions Of The Telephone Consumer Protection Act, Yuri R. Linetsky

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Sustainable Water Resource Management And Participatory System Dynamics: Case Study: Developing The Palouse Basin Participatory Model, Barbara Cosens

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The complexity of explaining highly scientific information and juggling a plethora of social values is leading agencies and communities such as those in the Palouse Basin to explore the use of participatory modeling processes using system dynamics. Participatory system dynamics as a methodology creates a transparent nexus of science, policy options, social concerns and local knowledge that enhances discussion of issues surrounding the use of natural resources. The process of developing a systems model uses the tenets of scientific theory, hypothesis testing and clear statements of assumptions. A unique aspect of the Palouse basin project is the use of system …

Outsourcing Incompetence: An Essay In Honor Of Paul Verkuil, Arthur J. Jacobson

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Structural Obstacles To Settlement Of Land Use Disputes, Stewart E. Sterk

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In many states, legal doctrine discourages settlement of land use litigation by requiring that any settlement undergo the same review process as the decision that led to the litigation in the first place. The problem is exacerbated by broad standing rules that allow a variety of parties to challenge the settlement. As a result, municipalities and developers often have an incentive to litigate to judgment, even though both parties would prefer a negotiated or mediated solution.

On the other hand, permitting developers and municipalities to settle litigation behind closed doors could impair both the quality and the legitimacy of the …

Anatomy Of An Aggregate Settlement: The Triumph Of Temptation Over Ethics, Lester Brickman

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In an aggregate settlement, usually of a mass tort claim, a defendant agrees to pay a specific dollar amount to be divided up by the lawyer among her multiple clients which may number in the hundreds and even thousands. Each client, therefore, is in competition with all of the lawyer’s other clients suing the same defendant for a share of the fixed sum. Rule 1.8(g) of the ABA Rules of Professional Conduct requires that each client give their informed consent to their allocation. To facilitate the settlement and the often quite substantial contingency fees to be earned, lawyers may mislead …

Justice Stevens And The Expert Executive, Deborah Pearlstein

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Alternative Elements, Jessica A. Roth

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The U.S. Constitution provides a criminal defendant with a right to trial by jury, and most states and the federal government require criminal juries to agree unanimously before a defendant may be convicted. But what exactly must a jury agree upon unanimously? Well-established doctrine, pursuant to In re Winship, provides that the jury must agree that the prosecution has proven every element of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt. Yet what the elements of any given offense are is not as clear as one might expect. Frequently, criminal statutes—especially federal statutes—describe an array of prohibited conduct, leaving ambiguous whether …

Expression By Ordinance: Preemption And Proxy In Local Legislation, Lindsay Nash

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Local laws based on immigration status have prompted heated national debate on federalism and discrimination. A second strain of nuisance-related legislation has emerged in recent years, which often targets these same immigrant communities. This paper examines the hitherto-unstudied correlation between ordinances explicitly related to immigrants and legislation regarding nuisance–as illuminated through primary research into municipal legislation across the nation. Evaluating these laws and the context of their enactment, this research shows when and how nuisance laws target certain populations. Ultimately, this inquiry reveals troubling parallels to previous community responses to disfavored subgroups and the harm resulting from proxy legislation.

Documentary Disenfranchisement, Jessie Allen

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In the generally accepted picture of criminal disenfranchisement in the United States today, permanent voting bans are rare. Laws on the books in most states now provide that people with criminal convictions regain their voting rights after serving their sentences. This Article argues that the legal reality may be significantly different. Interviews conducted with county election officials in New York suggest that administrative practices sometimes transform temporary voting bans into lifelong disenfranchisement. Such de facto permanent disenfranchisement has significant political, legal, and cultural implications. Politically, it undermines the comforting story that states’ legislative reforms have ameliorated the antidemocratic interaction of …

Inequitable Administration: Documenting Family For Tax Purposes, Anthony C. Infanti

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Family can bring us joy, and it can bring us grief. It can also bring us tax benefits and tax detriments. Often, as a means of ensuring compliance with Internal Revenue Code provisions that turn on a family relationship, taxpayers are required to document their relationship with a family member. Most visibly, taxpayers are denied an additional personal exemption for a child or other dependent unless they furnish the individual’s name, Social Security number, and relationship to the taxpayer.

In this article, I undertake the first systematic examination of these documentation requirements. Given the privileging of the “traditional” family throughout …

Knowledge Curation, Michael J. Madison

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This Article addresses conservation, preservation, and stewardship of knowledge, and laws and institutions in the cultural environment that support those things. Legal and policy questions concerning creativity and innovation usually focus on producing new knowledge and offering access to it. Equivalent attention rarely is paid to questions of old knowledge. To what extent should the law, and particularly intellectual property law, focus on the durability of information and knowledge? To what extent does the law do so already, and to what effect? This article begins to explore those questions. Along the way, the article takes up distinctions among different types …

Beyond Invention: Patent As Knowledge Law, Michael J. Madison

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The decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Bilski v. Kappos, concerning the legal standard for determining patentable subject matter under the American Patent Act, is used as a starting point for a brief review of historical, philosophical, and cultural influences on subject matter questions in both patent and copyright law. The article suggests that patent and copyright law jurisprudence was constructed initially by the Court with explicit attention to the relationship between these forms of intellectual property law and the roles of knowledge in society. Over time, explicit attention to that relationship has largely disappeared from …

The Thirteenth Amendment And Interest Convergence, William M. Carter Jr.

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The Thirteenth Amendment was intended to eliminate the institution of slavery and to eliminate the legacy of slavery. Having accomplished the former, the Amendment has only rarely been extended to the latter. The Thirteenth Amendment’s great promise therefore remains unrealized.

This Article explores the gap between the Thirteenth Amendment’s promise and its implementation. Drawing on Critical Race Theory, this Article argues that the relative underdevelopment of Thirteenth Amendment doctrine is due in part to a lack of perceived interest convergence in eliminating what the Amendment’s Framers called the “badges and incidents of slavery.” The theory of interest convergence, in its …

Judges' Gender And Employment Discrimination Cases: Emerging Evidence-Based Empirical Conclusions, Pat K. Chew

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This article surveys the emerging empirical research on the relationship between the judges' gender and the results in employment discrimination cases.

Present At The Resurrection: Islamic Finance And Islamic Law, Haider Ala Hamoudi

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This short paper summarizes an extremely stimulating plenary session, held at the XVIIIth Congress of the International Academy of Comparative Law in Washington DC, dealing specifically with the topic of Islamic finance. The speakers were three renowned leaders in the field. Specifically, they were Kilian Balz, a partner at Amereller who has both practiced extensively in the field, and written about it while at the Harvard Islamic Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School, Frank Vogel, coauthor of a leading book on Islamic finance and former director of the Islamic Legal Studies Program, and Mahmoud El Gamal, a prolific writer …

The Will Of The (Iraqi) People, Haider Ala Hamoudi

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While there has been much literature on the Iraqi constitution of both the scholarly and popular media variety, attention to contemporary Iraqi judicial decisions, and in particular those of the Iraqi Federal Supreme Court, has been far less pronounced. In fact, my own search has not led me to a single published law review article on the subject. There is some irony to this – it is, after all, rather difficult to address the concept of constitutionalism in any state without reference to constitutional praxis, and the judiciary is, at the very least, an integral participant in that praxis. I …

The Rome I Regulation Rules On Party Autonomy For Choice Of Law: A U.S. Perspective, Ronald A. Brand

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This chapter was presented at a conference in Dublin on the (then) new Rome I Regulation of the European Union in the fall of 2009. It contrasts the Rome I rules on party autonomy with those in the United States. In particular, it considers the rules in the Rome I Regulation that ostensibly protect consumers by discouraging party agreement on a pre-dispute basis to the law governing a consumer contract. These rules are compared with the absence of private international law restrictions on choice of forum and choice of law in the United States, even in consumer contracts. The result …

Moral Rights And Supernatural Fiction: Authorial Dignity And The New Moral Rights Agendas, Jacqueline D. Lipton

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In recent years, several scholars have revisited the question of moral rights protections for creators of copyright works in the United States. Their scholarship has focused on defining a moral rights agenda that comports with American constitutional values, as well as being practically suited to current copyright business practices. Much of this scholarship has prioritized a right of attribution over other moral rights, such as the right of integrity. This Article evaluates some of these recent moral rights models in light of a sample of comments made by American supernatural fiction authors about their works. The Author questions whether the …

Surviving (And Thriving) In The First Year Of Trial Practice, Maureen A. Howard

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The substance and procedure of trial practice may vary across different law firms and agencies, but there are certain challenges that all first-year trial lawyers face when starting out. No matter how brilliant and capable a newly minted attorney may be, there are some lessons more indelibly learned on the job than in law school; while these lessons are undoubtedly valuable, they can be painful and embarrassing. Although reading about the possible pitfalls of the first year of trial practice is not as educational as walking through the fire oneself, I have collected over the years a few tips and …

Intellectual Property, Innovation, And The Future: Toward A Better Model For Educating Leaders In Intellectual Property Law, Robert W. Gomulkiewicz

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Intellectual property sits at the center of today’s global information economy. Today, producers and users of intellectual property come from both developed and developing nations. Intellectual property matters as much to China and India as it does to Germany and the United States. This reality has driven a monumental demand for lawyers who can make and implement intellectual property law - that is to say, the new leaders in intellectual property law. Indeed, the demand for intellectual property law-trained lawyers triggered a “big bang” in the creation of advanced intellectual property law programs at American law schools. The new leaders …

Student-Edited Law Reviews And Their Role In U.S. Legal Education, Daniel H. Foote

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>p>For well over a centur y student-edited law reviews have been a major vehicle for publication of scholarship on law in the United States. At those law reviews, students bear responsibility for nearly all aspects of the publication process, including the vitally important task of selecting what works will be published. Criticisms have been raised over various aspects of this system, but they have not stemmed the rise of student-edited law reviews. Today, such law reviews are firmly entrenched as a central feature of the U.S. legal system; and, facilitat­ ed by advances in technology, the number of student-edited …

Intellectual Property, Innovation, And The Future: Toward A Better Model For Educating Leaders In Intellectual Property Law, Robert W. Gomulkiewicz

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Intellectual property (IP) sits at the center of the global economy. Today, producers and users of intellectual property come from both developed and developing nations. Intellectual property matters as much to China and India as it does to Germany and the United States. This reality has driven a monumental demand for lawyers who have expertise in intellectual property law. These lawyers are the new leaders in intellectual property law.

The global demand for intellectual property law-trained lawyers triggered a "big bang" in the creation of advanced intellectual property law programs (IP Programs) at American law schools. The new leaders in …

More Therapeutic, Less Collaborative? Asserting The Psychotherapist-Patient Privilege On Behalf Of Mature Minors, Bernard P. Perlmutter

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No abstract provided.

The Political Economy Of Fraud On The Market, William Wilson Bratton, Michael L. Wachter

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The fraud-on-the-market class action no longer enjoys much academic support. The justifications traditionally advanced by its defenders-compensation for out-of-pocket loss and deterrence of fraud-are thought to have failed due to the action's real world dependence on enterprise liability and issuer-funded settlements. The compensation justification collapses when considered from the point of view of different types of shareholders. Well-diversified shareholders' receipts and payments of damages balance over time and amount to a wash before payment of litigation costs. The shareholders arguably in need of compensation--fundamental value investors who rely on published reports--are undercompensated due to pro rata distribution of settlement proceeds …

The Enforceability Of Exacted Conservation Easements, Jessica Owley

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No abstract provided.

The Conundrum Of Zealous Representation (Book Review), Scott E. Sundby

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No abstract provided.