Law Commons^™

Alternative Visions For The Federal Criminal Justice And Corrections System: Is True Change Possible?, Nora V. Demleitner

Scholarly Articles

None available.

School Boy's Tricks: Reasonable Cybersecurity And The Panic Of Law Creation, David S. Levine

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

No abstract provided.

The Dtsa: The Litigator's Full-Employment Act, Sharon K. Sandeen

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

Civil litigation is expensive, both for the party bringing suit and the party that must defend against such claims. For a variety of reasons, not the least of which are the usual requests for preliminary relief and protective orders, trade secret litigation is particularly expensive. These costs can have a crippling effect on small businesses and start-up companies that are accused of trade secret misappropriation, often resulting in litigation expenses that exceed the alleged harm to the plaintiff. Such litigation is particularly costly and unjust in cases where the plaintiff asserts rights that, due to common misunderstandings about the limited …

Introduction: The Defend Trade Secrets Act Of 2015, Christopher B. Seaman

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

This is an introduction to a Roundtable on the Defend Trade Secrets Act published by the Washington and Lee Law Review Online in 2015.

Ex Parte Seizures And The Defend Trade Secrets Act, Eric Goldman

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

Congress is considering the Defend Trade Secrets Act, which would create a new federal trade secret civil cause of action. The Act includes a quirky and unprecedented ex parte procedure for trade secret owners to obtain a seizure order. The seizure provision applies in, at best, a narrow set of circumstances, and it oddly attempts to protect intangible trade secrets by seizing chattels. Despite procedural safeguards, the seizure provision also enables anti-competitive misuse.

More generally, the fact-based disputes that inevitably must be resolved in trade secret litigation make trade secrets an especially poor basis for ex parte actions. As a …

Sexual Orientation Discrimination Under Title Vii After Baldwin V. Foxx, Ryan H. Nelson

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Baldwin v. Foxx opined—for the first time—that employment discrimination based on sexual orientation violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This Article tackles the two administrative law questions that Baldwin poses: what level of deference should a court afford Baldwin, and should such deference force that court to overturn precedent holding that sexual orientation discrimination lies beyond the purview of Title VII?

First, after the Supreme Court’s opinion in Barnhart, lower courts have split on whether Chevron Step Zero should be governed by the rule-of-law test announced in Christensen …

W&L Law Fall Scholarship Celebration 2015, Brant J. Hellwig

Library Events

On September 30, 2015, the Washington and Lee Law Library hosted a Fall Scholarship Celebration. The event took place in the Law Library's third floor reading room from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m.

On display were dozens of scholarly articles, books, chapters, and amicus briefs authored by the W&L Law faculty and student body during 2014 and 2015, with hundreds of additional works accessible online through the Scholarly Commons institutional repository.

Faculty, librarians, staff, and administrators mingled with law students over hors d'oeuvres and wine to peruse the formidable scholarly output of the W&L Law community. Spouses, alumni, faculty from W&L's …

Ultracrepidarianism In Forensic Science: The Hair Evidence Debacle, David H. Kaye

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

For over 130 years, scientific sleuths have inspected hairs under microscopes. Late in 2012, the FBI, the Innocence Project, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers joined forces to review thousands of microscopic hair comparisons performed by FBI examiners over several of those decades. The results have been astounding. Based on the first few hundred cases in which hairs were said to match, it appears that examiners exceeded the limits of science in over 90% of their reports or testimony. The disclosure of this statistic has led to charges that the FBI faked an entire field of forensic science, …

In Defense Of Sports Antitrust Law: A Response To Law Review Articles Calling For The Administrative Regulation Of Commercial Sports, Marc Edelman

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

In recent years, two law review articles have proposed that the United States regulate commercial sports through a direct federal commission, rather than through traditional antitrust remedies. Nevertheless, the practical realities of commercial sports’ power to influence government policy offset the many theoretical advantages to creating a specialized regulatory body to oversee commercial sports. The commercial sports industry already possesses an extraordinarily strong lobbying arm that has successfully lobbied for special legislation, such as the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 and the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992. If commercial sports ever were to become administratively regulated, sports …

Local Government Finance As Integrated System: The Uneasy Case For Using Special Districts In Real Estate Finance (A Response To Odinet’S Super-Liens To The Rescue? A Case Against Special Districts In Real Estate Finance), Darien Shanske

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

Local governments have long used special financing districts to build infrastructure. If a local project, say building a pocket park, is likely to increase the values of properties very close to the park, then why should those properties not pay for the park in the first place? Though efficient and fair in many cases, the use of these districts can also be problematic. For instance, it seems likely that wealthier residents, with higher property values to leverage, are especially likely to use these districts effectively. It has also been the case that developers have used these districts speculatively, which had …

Is It Time To Give Up On Antitrust Law For Pro Sports?, Geoffrey Rapp

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

Professor Nathaniel Grow has produced a creative, thoroughly researched piece arguing that antitrust has failed in the context of professional sports and calling for the creation of a national-level federal regulatory agency to address anticompetitive conduct by the major leagues. I respond to his diagnosis of antitrust’s failings and to his prescription.

Response To Christopher Odinet, Super- Liens To The Rescue? A Case Against Special Districts In Real Estate Finance, Peter W. Salsich Jr.

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

No abstract provided.

The Liberal Arts In Practice, Brian C. Murchison

Scholarly Articles

None available.

Brief Of Restitution And Remedies Scholars As Amici Curiae In Support Of Respondent: Spokeo V. Robins, Doug Rendleman, Douglas Laycock, Mark P. Gergen

Scholarly Articles

Both consumer protection and restitution may be casualties in a collision with the constitutional law of standing.

Spokeo collects information from the internet and publishes it; however, Spokeo neither verifies the facts nor confirms which same-named person it refers to. Robins alleges that Spokeo violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act by disseminating false information about him. He seeks class certification and up to $1,000 in statutory minimum damages instead of compensatory damages. Spokeo argues that Robins lacks standing because he suffered no “injury in fact,” no “concrete harm.”

Statutory minimum recoveries for defendants’ violations of plaintiffs’ individual rights without proof …

Table Of Contents

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Rethinking Limited Liability Of Parent Corporations For Foreign Subsidiaries’ Violations Of International Human Rights Law, Gwynne Skinner

Washington and Lee Law Review

The doctrine of limited liability of shareholders often prevents victims harmed by a corporation’s foreign subsidiary’s violation of international human rights norms from obtaining a remedy when that subsidiary operates in a country that has a weak or ineffective judicial system. This is because victims are often unable to obtain a remedy in these countries, and the doctrine almost always prevents victims from seeking a remedy from the parent corporation. Given this problem, in what situations should parent corporations be liable for the tortious activities of their foreign subsidiaries? This Article discusses the circumstances where imposing liability on parent corporations …

Customized Procedure In Theory And Reality, W. Mark C. Weidemaier

Washington and Lee Law Review

Contract theory has long posited that parties can maximize contract value by manipulating the procedural rules that will apply if there is a dispute. Beyond choosing a litigation or arbitration forum, parties can allocate costs and fees, alter pleading standards, adjust evidentiary and discovery rules, and customize nearly every aspect of the adjudication process. In time, this theoretical insight became a matter of faith. The assumption that contracts routinely alter procedural rules spawned debate over the normative implications of allowing parties to dictate procedure. Only recently have a few studies suggested that this debate may lack a firm empirical foundation. …

Masthead And Front Matter

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

The New Peonage, Tamar R. Birckhead

Washington and Lee Law Review

Although the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution formally abolished slavery and involuntary servitude in 1865, the text created an exception for the punishment of crimes “whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” Two years later, Congress passed The Anti-Peonage Act in an attempt to prohibit the practice of coerced labor for debt. Yet, in the wake of the Civil War, Southern states innovated ways to impose peonage but avoid violations of the law, including criminal surety statutes that allowed employers to pay the court fines for indigent misdemeanants charged with minor offenses in exchange for a commitment to work. …

Taxonomy Of The Snowden Disclosures, Margaret Hu

Washington and Lee Law Review

This brief Essay offers a proposed taxonomy of the Snowden Disclosures. An informed discussion on the legality and constitutionality of the emerging cybersurveillance and mass dataveillance programs revealed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden necessitates the furtherance of cybersurveillance aptitude. This Essay contends, therefore, that a detailed examination of the Snowden disclosures requires not just a careful inquiry into the legal and constitutional framework that guides the oversight of these programs. A close interrogation also requires a careful inquiry into the big data architecture that guides them. This inquiry includes examining the underlying theories of data science and the rationales …

The Player, The Video Game, And The Tattoo Artist: Who Has The Most Skin In The Game?, Jennifer L. Commander

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Living In A Material World: Defining “Materiality” In The Municipal Bond Market And Rule 15c2–12, Charlotte W. Rhodes

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Keep On Truckin', Uber: Using The Dormant Commerce Clause To Challenge Regulatory Roadblocks To Tncs, Boris Bindman

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

No abstract provided.

Raze The Debt Ceiling: A Test Case For State-Sovereign And Institutional Bondholder Litigation To Void The Debt Limit Statute, Victor Williams

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

In March 2015, the debt ceiling was hit again and sovereign default loomed. Refusing to timely raise the debt ceiling, congressional ideologues have four times pushed our nation to the brink of a catastrophic debt default in as many years. Our struggling economy is again threatened, financial institutions are again spending millions planning for default, and vulnerable citizens are once again worrying about their benefit payments. Enough is enough.

This Essay argues that nationwide bondholder litigation can void the unconstitutional debt ceiling, and it presents the first litigation in that effort. (Williams v. Lew, No. 15-1565, U.S. Court of Appeals …

Preventing Creditor Abuse Of Deficiency Judgements: Some Good (And Not-So-Good) Approaches, Dale A. Whitman

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

No abstract provided.

Disentangling Choice Of Law For Torts And Contracts, Rick Kirgis

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

In a federal system with state lines that are easily crossed, physically and electronically, legal disputes often raise choice-of-law issues. Common among those disputes are torts and contracts cases. The courts have taken a variety of approaches to these cases, leading to inconsistent results that depend largely on which forum the plaintiff selects. Judicial fairness and economy dictate, or should dictate, that the choice-of-law issues be resolvable consistently and without unnecessarily tying up the courts or imposing large litigation costs, if it can be done in a principled manner. This article shows how it could be done.

Setting Up Shop: Technology Options & Recommendations, Jennifer R. Mart-Rice, Bradford Thomas

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Virginia Bar Exam, July 2015, Section 2

Virginia Bar Exam Archive

No abstract provided.

Virginia Bar Exam, July 2015, Section 1

Virginia Bar Exam Archive

No abstract provided.

Representation By Counsel Or Access To Defense Resources: Utah’S Single Source Approach To Indigent Defense, John P. Gross

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

The State of Utah has a unique way of providing representation in criminal cases to defendants who are too poor to hire an attorney. In Utah, there is no statewide funding or supervision of indigent defense. Each county, city, or town is responsible for creating and funding their own indigent defense delivery system. Utah is one of only two states in the United States—Pennsylvania is the other—that fails to provide state funding or oversight of indigent defense. But what makes Utah truly unique is the way in which counties and municipalities are required to structure their indigent defense delivery systems. …