Law Commons^™

Child Obesity, School Food Environments And The Best Interests Of The Child, Benedetta Faedi Duramy

Publications

This article is about child obesity, school food, and the key role schools can play in creating environments that can enhance children’s eating patterns and lifestyle behaviours and, thus, can support the realization of children’s best interest in relation to food and health. In contrast to the traditional approach that frames the obesity problem as a personal issue or as a matter of parental responsibility, this article argues that the prevention of child obesity should be interpreted as a State obligation under both international and domestic laws. Analysis turns to the example of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, adopted in …

This Book Is Just My Type, Jennifer Babcock

Publications

Jennifer Babcock reviews Typography for Lawyers by Matthew Butterick (2d ed., O'Connor's 2015), 240 pages.

Playing Favorites? Implicit Bias On The Bench, Michele Benedetto Neitz

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The concept of implicit bias has moved to the forefront of public discussion in the last decade, and many judges have already been trained on this issue. But it is worth considering how a specific type of implicit bias, in-group favoritism, may affect a judge’s everyday decisions.

Reimagining Icarus: Ethics, Law And Policy Considerations For Commercial Human Spaceflight, Sara M. Langston

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Commercial human spaceflight presents an area for engaging novel human activity and objectives, to include space exploration, entertainment, transportation and extraterrestrial resource acquisition. The inherent dangers and lack of scientific and medical certainty involved however raise interrelated questions of ethics, bioethics, law and public policy. This is particularly the case with spaceflight participant (SFP) screening, selection, and commercial human spaceflight activities where regulations are currently silent or lacking. In the absence of established law, ethics can play an important role by informing industry standards, policies and best practices. Understanding the fundamental ethical values at stake in the application of new …

All California Companies Should Mind Their Abcs In Classifying Workers, Hina B. Shah

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What is the proper legal standard in determining whether a worker is an employee or an independent contractor under California’s wage and hour laws?

The Viability And Sustainability Of Landlocked States Under International Law Vis-A-Vis Municipal Law: The Case Of South East States Of Nigeria, Christian N. Okeke

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This paper has been divided broadly into two parts; the first deals with landlocked independent states under international law while the second part deals with the unique position of Southeast states and what lessons they can learn from the experiences of landlocked states in trying to create, within Nigeria, an economic powerhouse that would not only benefit the region but the country as a whole.

The Substantial Identity Requirement Of Patent Infringement, Samuel F. Ernst

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No abstract provided.

Bloomberg’S Points Of Law: Can They Compete With Headnotes?, Jill Sturgeon

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No abstract provided.

Book Review, Anna Spain Bradley

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No abstract provided.

Pluralism Applied: A Concordant Approach To Selecting Contract Rules, Samuel Ernst

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Contract rules can be justified by utilitarian theories (such as efficiency theory), which are concerned with promoting rules that enhance societal wealth and utility. Contract rules can also be justified by rights-based theories (such as promissory and reliance theories), which are concerned with protecting the contractual freedom and interests of the individual parties to the contract. Or, contract rules can be analyzed through the lenses of a host of other theories, including critical legal theory, bargain theory, and so on. Because no single, unitary theory can ever explain the complex body of laws and societal conventions surrounding contracts, the best …

The Future Is Mobile: Financial Inclusion And Technological Innovation In The Emerging World, Eleanor Lumsden

Publications

The digital revolution is in full bloom and technology is being used to solve the world’s most challenging problems, yet traditional banking excludes many of the world’s poorest from taking advantage of the full fruits of the financial system. Especially in developing countries, implementing mobile financial systems can speed financial inclusion and spur economic growth. There is space for regulatory reform that addresses concerns with data security and consumer privacy yet does not stifle innovation. Throughout history, resistance to innovation has generally proved futile, and countries that refuse to change risk missing opportunities.

California Rushes In—Keeping Water Instream For Fisheries Without Federal Law, Paul Stanton Kibel

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This Article examines the ways that federal law and federal agencies currently provide a legal basis to keep water instream for California fisheries, and the ways that California water law may be in a position to fill the regulatory gap that may be left if federal water law and federal agencies recede.

Following the introduction, Part I of the Article identifies the different ways that instream flow affects California fisheries. Part II then surveys federal laws and federal agencies that have traditionally supported efforts to keep water instream for California fisheries. In Part III, the Article presents examples of how …

The Supreme Court Case That The Federal Circuit Overruled: Westinghouse V. Boyden Power Brake Co., Samuel F. Ernst

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Can a federal court of appeals overrule Supreme Court precedent? Not overtly. But if nobody takes notice, a circuit court can undermine Supreme Court precedent, vacating lower court decisions that rely on the precedent and announcing in published opinions that a once robust doctrine has somehow suddenly become archaic, disfavored, and rarely applied. This is how the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has caused an important Supreme Court patent law doctrine to vanish: the reverse doctrine of equivalents, as announced by the Court in the 1898 case Westinghouse v. Boyden Power Brake Co. Hence Westinghouse represents forgotten precedent …

Training Course On The Greening Of Water Law: Implementing Environment-Friendly Principles In Contemporary Water Treaties And Laws, Paul Stanton Kibel

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This class focuses on how international water law principles relate to the construction and operations of on-stream dams. Within this general focus, the following more specific topics are reviewed: (1) upstream/downstream nation rights and obligations relating to the impoundment and release of water from on-stream dams; (2) effect of on-stream dams on fisheries/aquatic habitat and fishers; (3) international environmental impact assessment obligations relating to the construction and operation of on-stream dams; (4) relation of hydro-electric dams to efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with energy production.

Childhood Obesity And Positive Obligations: A Child Rights-Based Approach, Benedetta Faedi Duramy

Publications

Childhood obesity is one of the most serious current public health challenges. Its prevalence has increased at an alarming rate. The World Health Organization estimated that in 2016 the global number of overweight children under the age of five was over 41 million. Although there is widespread concern about the rising rates of childhood obesity, there is not as much consensus on how to address the problem. Obesity has been mostly considered either a matter of personal responsibility or of parental responsibility when it concerns children. Inadequate attention has been given instead to the obligations borne by States to prevent …

Total Patent Exhaustion!, Samuel F. Ernst

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The exhaustion doctrine generally provides that when a patent holder sells or authorizes another party to sell a patented item, the patent rights in that item are exhausted, and the patent holder cannot pursue that product down the stream of commerce to demand royalties from each party that subsequently acquires the item. Patent holders have often sought to evade patent exhaustion by drafting licensing agreements attending or authorizing the sale of their patented products that place restrictions on the use of the patented item or otherwise provide that no patent exhaustion has occurred. In Impression Products v. Lexmark, the Supreme …

Forty Years From Fascism: Democratic Constitutionalism And The Spanish Model Of National Transformation, Eric C. Christiansen

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This Article seeks to understand and evaluate core elements of the past promise and present reality of Spain’s transformation from Francoist dictatorship to modern European democracy. It does this by investigating the role of the 1978 Constitution and the distinctive Spanish Model of relatively peaceful constitutional transformation in facilitating the key legal elements of Spain’s transition to democracy. Following a review of important historical developments related to Spanish constitutionalism in Part I, this Article scrutinizes the process by which Spain transitioned to democracy in the 1970s. Part II focuses particularly on the dominant characteristics of the Spanish Model, which facilitated …

A Year Of Reading, Jennifer Babcock

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How reading improves legal writing.

Rivers That Depend On Aquifers: Drafting Sgma Groundwater Plans With Fisheries In Mind, Paul Stanton Kibel, Julie Gantenbein

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Guidebook on rivers that depend on aquifers. Published by the Center on Urban and Environmental Law.

Also available at: https://ggucuel.org/fisheries.

A Brief History Of Anglo-Western Suicide: From Legal Wrong To Civil Right, Helen Y. Chang

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This article will examine the history of suicide from antiquity, where certain types of self-killing were socially acceptable, to its evolution as a criminal wrong and its modern reincarnation as a moral and legal right. In the early Common Era, suicide was not a criminal wrong, but with the spread of Christianity, suicide became illegal. In the present day, a growing minority of states have legalized some forms of suicide or self-killing. In 2018, six states and the District of Columbia had legalized some form of physician-assisted suicide: California, Colorado, District of Columbia, Montana, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington. Twenty-three states …

Access To Justice For Four Billion: Urban And Environmental Options And Challenges, Colin Crawford

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This Article proceeds in five parts. Part I considers four prominent theories on the meaning of "access to justice." To be sure, the lines and divisions between these positions are in practice less rigid than this text will at times suggest. Nonetheless, the four approaches are sufficiently different from one another to justify a critical evaluation. Part I therefore undertakes to provide such an evaluation of these different proposals. In this, Part I seeks to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the different proposals with respect to the search for answers to some of the questions related to what "access …

Case Study 2: Advising Governance Structures, Marci Seville, Bruce A. Green

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This case study is part of the Movement Lawyering Roundtable Symposium.

This symposium presents case studies of the often difficult ethical and tactical issues confronted by lawyers for social justice movements. These case studies were developed by the pairing of movement lawyers with legal ethicists and enriched by the discussions at the Movement Lawyering Ethics Roundtable. They seek to provide guidance to lawyers facing these recurrent issues. This issue also includes an essay entitled "rebuilding the Ethical Compass of the Law" and reading guides with selected bibliographies.

The Consensus Myth In Criminal Justice Reform, Benjamin Levin

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It has become popular to identify a “consensus” on criminal justice reform, but how deep is that consensus, actually? This Article argues that the purported consensus is much more limited than it initially appears. Despite shared reformist vocabulary, the consensus rests on distinct critiques that identify different flaws and justify distinct policy solutions. The underlying disagreements transcend traditional left/right political divides and speak to deeper disputes about the state and the role of criminal law in society.

The Article maps two prevailing, but fundamentally distinct, critiques of criminal law: (1) the quantitative approach (what I call the “over” frame); and …

Dethroning The Hierarchy Of Authority, Amy J. Griffin

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The use of authority in legal argument is constantly evolving—both the types of information deemed authoritative and their degree of authoritativeness—and that evolution has accelerated in recent years with dramatic changes in access to legal information. In contrast, the uncontroversial and ubiquitous “hierarchy of authority” used as the cornerstone for all legal analysis has remained entirely fixed. This article argues that the use of the traditional hierarchy as the dominant model for legal authority is deeply flawed, impeding a deeper understanding of the use of authority in legal argument. Lawyers, judges, and academics all know this, and yet no scholarly …

Government Lies And The Press Clause, Helen Norton

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This essay considers a particular universe of potentially dangerous governmental falsehoods: the government's lies and misrepresentations about and to the press.

Government's efforts to regulate private speakers' lies clearly implicate the First Amendment, as many (but not all) of our own lies are protected by the Free Speech Clause. But because the government does not have First Amendment rights of its own when it speaks, the constitutional limits, if any, on the government's own lies are considerably less clear.

In earlier work I have explored in some detail the Free Speech and Due Process Clauses as possible constraints on certain …

To Sue And Be Sued: Capacity And Immunity Of American Indian Nations, Richard B. Collins

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Can American Indian nations sue and be sued in federal and state courts? Specific issues are whether tribes have corporate capacity to sue, whether a Native group has recognized status as a tribe, and whether and to what extent tribes and their officers have governmental immunity from suit. Tribal capacity to sue is now well established, and federal law has well-defined procedures and rules for tribal recognition. But tribal sovereign immunity is actively disputed.

This Article reviews retained tribal sovereignty in general and summarizes past contests over tribal capacity to sue and their resolution into today’s settled rule. Next is …

The Government's Manufacture Of Doubt, Helen Norton

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“The manufacture of doubt” refers to a speaker’s strategic efforts to undermine factual assertions that threaten its self-interest. This strategy was perhaps most famously employed by the tobacco industry in its longstanding campaign to contest mounting medical evidence linking cigarettes to a wide range of health risks. At its best, the government’s speech can counter such efforts and protect the public interest, as exemplified by the Surgeon General’s groundbreaking 1964 report on the dangers of tobacco, a report that challenged the industry’s preferred narrative. But the government’s speech is not always so heroic, and governments themselves sometimes seek to manufacture …

Corporations As Conduits: A Cautionary Note About Regulating Hypotheticals, Douglas M. Spencer

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No abstract provided.

Understanding The Human Element In Search Algorithms And Discovering How It Affects Search Results, Susan Nevelow Mart

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When legal researchers search in online databases for the information they need to solve a legal problem, they need to remember that the algorithms that are returning results to them were designed by humans. The world of legal research is a human-constructed world, and the biases and assumptions the teams of humans that construct the online world bring to the task are imported into the systems we use for research. This article takes a look at what happens when six different teams of humans set out to solve the same problem: how to return results relevant to a searcher’s query …

Standing Rock, The Sioux Treaties, And The Limits Of The Supremacy Clause, Carla F. Fredericks, Jesse D. Heibel

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The controversy surrounding the Dakota Access Pipeline (“DAPL”) has put the peaceful plains of North Dakota in the national and international spotlight, drawing thousands of people to the confluence of the Missouri and Cannonball Rivers outside of Standing Rock Sioux Reservation for prayer and peaceful protest in defense of the Sioux Tribes’ treaties, lands, cultural property, and waters. Spanning over 7 months, including the harsh North Dakota winter, the gathering was visited by indigenous leaders and communities from around the world and represents arguably the largest gathering of indigenous peoples in the United States in more than 100 years.

At …