Law Commons^™

Evaluation Of The Design Piracy Prohibition Act: Is The Cure Worse Than The Disease?, Silvia Beltrametti

Silvia Beltrametti

Abstract: Is the Design Piracy Prohibition Act a necessary addition to the Intellectual Property panorama of the United States? American designers and otherwise creative minds do not have any means to protect their innovative design creations because none of the existing intellectual property measures can be tailored to the protection of design rights. To explore this issue, I go back to the underlying reasons for prohibiting the trade of counterfeit goods and I argue that counterfeiting and design piracy are analytically similar and there is no reason justifying a different legal treatment, especially given the close interrelation of these two …

Patenting Standards - A Case For Us Antitrust Law Or A Call For Recognizing Immanent Public Policy Limitations To The Exploitation Rights Conferred By The Patent Act?, Apostolos Chronopoulos

Apostolos Chronopoulos

This paper examines the adverse effect of patent ambushing on competitive conditions resulting in the distortion of the standardization process in markets where the effectiveness of competition relies heavily on standardization. The US Rambus litigation serves as a point of departure. In this case, the strategic behavior of the patentee was subjected to both an antitrust and unfair competition analysis. Both approaches display an inadequacy to squarely balance all of the conflicting interests involved. The solution proposed is to apply the patent misuse doctrine as a rule that expresses a public policy defense against patent enforcement so as to ensure …

Environmental Federalism: Historical Roots And Contemporary Models, Robert V. Percival

Robert Percival

No abstract provided.

The Bounds Of Consent: Consent Decrees, Settlements And Federal Environmental Policy Making, Robert V. Percival

Robert Percival

No abstract provided.

Who's Afraid Of The Precautionary Principle?, Robert V. Percival

Robert Percival

The precautionary principle – the notion that lack of scientific certainty should not foreclose precautionary regulation – has become enormously popular in recent years, as reflected by its endorsement in many important international declarations and agreements. Despite its growing influence, the precautionary principle recently has come under fire by critics who argue that it is incoherent, potentially paralyzing, and that it will lead regulators to make bad choices. They maintain that society faces greater peril from overly costly regulations than from exposure to sources of environmental risks whose effect on human health and the environment is not fully understood at …

Responding To Environmental Risk: A Pluralistic Perspective, Robert V. Percival

Robert Percival

No abstract provided.

Escaping The Common Law's Shadow: Standing In The Light Of Laidlaw, Robert V. Percival, Joanna B. Goger

Robert Percival

No abstract provided.

Risk Based Decision-Making At The Environmental Protection Agency, Robert V. Percival

Robert Percival

No abstract provided.

Who Sues For Divorce? From Fault Through Fiction To Freedom, Lawrence M. Friedman, Robert V. Percival

Robert Percival

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Attorney Fee Shifting In Public Interest Litigation, Robert V. Percival, Geoffrey P. Miller

Robert Percival

No abstract provided.

Water Pollution Control: Lessons From Transnational Experience, Robert V. Percival

Robert Percival

Water is fundamental to life, as reflected in space scientists' compulsive search for signs of its presence when scrutinizing other planets for possible life forms. Fortunately for our species, more than two-thirds of our planet is covered with water, creating an environment richly conducive to life. Humans have just begun to appreciate how precious earth's water resources are and how vulnerable they are to damage from human activity. Efforts to protect earth's water resources from contamination have been among the most prominent catalysts for the development of environmental law thoroughout the world. After surveying this experience, this paper finds that …

El Surgimiento Del Derecho Ambiental Global, Robert V. Percival

Robert Percival

Legal systems across the globe are responding to environmental concerns in surprising new ways. As nations upgrade their environmental standards, some are transplanting law and regulatory policy innovations derived from the experience of other countries, including nations with very different legal and cultural traditions. New national, regional, and international initiatives have been undertaken both by governments and private organizations. Greater cross-border collaboration between government officials, nongovernmental organizations, multinational corporations and other entities is shaping environmental policy in ways that blur traditional private/public land domestic/international distinctions. The result has been the emergence of a kind of “global environmental law” – law …

A Tale Of Two Courts: Litigation In Alameda And San Benito Counties, Lawrence M. Friedman, Robert V. Percival

Robert Percival

No abstract provided.

The Processing Of Felonies In The Superior Court Of Alameda County 1880-1974, Lawrence M. Friedman, Robert V. Percival

Robert Percival

No abstract provided.

The Frictions Of Federalism: The Rise And Fall Of The Federal Common Law Of Interstate Nuisance, Robert V. Percival

Robert Percival

Prior to the erection in the 1970s of a comprehensive federal regulatory infrastructure to protect the environment, transboundary pollution disputes frequently were adjudicated by the U.S. Supreme Court, exercising its original jurisdiction over disputes between states. In a series of cases commencing at the dawn of the Twentieth Century, the Court served as a national arbiter of interstate pollution disputes. This paper reviews the history of the Supreme Court's use of these cases to develop a federal common law of interstate nuisance. The paper argues that while federal common law initially performed a zoning function by encouraging polluters to relocate …

The Role Of The Council On Competitiveness In Regulatory Review, Robert V. Percival

Robert Percival

No abstract provided.

Conservation And Renewable Energy Sources As Supply Alternatives For New York's Electric Utilities, Robert V. Percival

Robert Percival

No abstract provided.

The Challenge Of Chinese Environmental Law, Robert V. Percival

Robert Percival

China faces some of the most difficult environmental problems in the world as rapid industrial growth has produced horrendous air and water pollution. How China’s government responds to these challenges will have profound effects on the global environment. This essay discusses how Chinese environmental laws are evolving to cope with these problems and the severe obstacles that Chinese authorities face. It notes that the highly decentralized nature of China’s system of environmental laws makes it difficult for the central government to implement and enforce the laws. The essay concludes that, despite some progress, the lack of an independent judiciary and …

Restoring Regulatory Policy To Serve The Public Interest, Robert V. Percival

Robert Percival

No abstract provided.

Resolución De Conflictos Ambientales: Lecciones Aprendidas De La Historia De La Contaminación De Las Fundiciones De Minerales, Robert V. Percival

Robert Percival

No abstract provided.

21世纪环境法展望 (Environmental Law In The 21st Century), Robert V. Percival

Robert Percival

After reviewing the history of environmental law, this article discusses some important lessons that can be learned from its successes and failures. It discusses the continued influence of common law notions of causal injury on the administrative state and how the globalization of environmental concerns is affecting environmental law throughout the world. It concludes by venturing some predictions concerning the future of environmental law.

The Emergence Of Global Environmental Law, Tseming Yang, Robert V. Percival

Robert Percival

With the global growth of public concern about environmental issues over the last several decades, environmental legal norms have become increasingly internationalized. This development has been reflected both in the surge of international environmental agreements as well as the growth and increased sophistication of national environmental legal systems around the world. The result is the emergence of a set of legal principles and norms regarding the environment, such that one can arguably describe it as a body of law. After exploring the diverse forces that are contributing to the emergence of what we call “global environmental law,” this Article considers …

Willfully Blind For Good Reason, Deborah Hellman

Deborah Hellman

Willful blindness is not an appropriate substitute for knowledge in crimes that require a mens rea of knowledge because an actor who contrives his own ignorance is only sometimes as culpable as a knowing actor. This paper begins with the assumption that the classic willfully blind actor – the drug courier - is culpable. If so, any plausible account of willful blindness must provide criteria that find this actor culpable. This paper then offers two limiting cases: a criminal defense lawyer defending a client he suspects of perjury and a pain doctor who suspects his patient may be lying about …

Fifth Avenue Freeze-Out, Timothy Zick

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Interview With Brian Kilroy By Andrea L’Hommedieu, Brian J. Kilroy

George J. Mitchell Oral History Project

Biographical Note
Brian Joseph Kilroy was born on November 22, 1955, to Robert and Constance Ann (Greaney) Kilroy in Lewiston, Maine, and grew up in Delaware. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Delaware and a master’s degree from the University of Maine. His father’s parents were Francis and Jane Kilroy, both from Portland. Francis Kilroy and George Mitchell, Sr. were brothers. Brian’s grandmother, Jane, served as a Democrat in the Maine legislature and on the Democratic National Committee.

Summary
Interview includes discussion of: Kilroy family background; George Mitchell’s father; Jane Kilroy’s career in Maine state legislature and …

Blood Libel: Radical Islam’S Conscription Of The Law Of Defamation Into A Legal Jihad Against The West—And How To Stop It, Robert A. Pate

Robert A Pate

On May 19th, 2009, a panel of distinguished legal professionals assembled in Washington, D.C. at a conference, entitled Libel Lawfare: Silencing Criticism of Radical Islam, to discuss radical Islam’s exploitation of Western libel laws to silence authors and journalists who seek to expose terror-financing networks and criticize radical Islam. The debate also embodied a cresting wave of public concern about the surprising ways Western laws enable this assault.This paper seeks to call attention to two critical mistakes, which were perpetuated by panelists at the conference and which are consistently present in current libel lawfare scholarship. Foremost, no one has yet …

Summary Of Fierle V. Perez, 125 Nev. Adv. Op. No. 36, Mark Hesiak

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

2009-11-19

Bad Science, Linda Greer, Rena I. Steinzor

Rena I. Steinzor

No abstract provided.

Troubled Waters: Mid-Twentieth Century American Society On "Trial" In The Films Of John Waters, Taunya Lovell Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

In this Article Professor Banks argues that what makes many of filmmaker John Waters early films so subversive is his use of the “white-trash” body—people marginalized by and excluded from conventional white America—as countercultural heroes. He uses the white trash body as a surrogate for talk about race and sexuality in the early 1960s. I argue that in many ways Waters’ critiques of mid-twentieth century American society reflect the societal changes that occurred in the last forty years of that century. These societal changes resulted from the civil rights, gay pride, student, anti-war and women’s movements, all of which used …

Rfk And The Jfk Assassination: Bobby Never Bought The Lone-Gunman Theory, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

Popular Media

One of the myths propagated by defenders of the Warren Commission and the Warren Commission Report is the canard that President John F. Kennedy's brother Robert accepted the commission's conclusion, embodied in its Report, that JFK's assassination was committed by a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, and that there was no conspiracy behind the president's murder.