Law Commons^™

Judicial Activism In Transnational Business And Human Rights Litigation, Hassan M. Ahmad

All Faculty Publications

This article explores a more expansive adjudicative role for domestic judiciaries in the U.S., U.K., and Canada in private law disputes that concern personal and environmental harm by multinational corporations that operate in the Global South. This expansive role may confront—although not necessarily upend—existing understandings around the separation of powers in common law jurisdictions. I canvass existing literature on judicial activism. Then, I detail legality gaps in the selected common law home states, which can be broken down into four categories: i) failed legislation; ii) deficient legislation; iii) judicial restraint; and iv) judicial deference.

I suggest three ways to actualize …

Playing The Game Of International Law, Uri Weiss, Joseph Agassi

Touro Law Review

In the realist game of international negotiations, each state attempts to promote their interest regardless of international law. Thus, it is negotiations in the shadow of the sword, i.e., a negotiation in which each side knows that if the parties will not achieve an agreement, the alternative may be a war, and thus the bargaining position of each party is a function of their capacities in a case of war. Negotiation in the shadow of international law is an alternative to it: in this alternative the parties negotiate according to their international legal rights. It reduces injustice and incentive to …

Developments In The Laws Affecting Electronic Payments And Financial Services, Sarah Jane Hughes, Stephen T. Middlebrook, Tom Kierner

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The past year proved to be a busy period for the regulation of electronic payments and financial services. In this year’s survey, we discuss rulemakings, enforcement actions, and other litigation that has significantly impacted the law governing payments and financial services. Part II addresses the ongoing fight between federal and state authorities over which should properly regulate Fin- Tech entities and describes some new steps the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (“OCC”) has taken to assert its authority in this area. Part III details an enforcement action that California regulators took against a FinTech company they determined had …

Checking The Scorecard: Title Ix, College Sports, And The Limits Of Litigation, Brian L. Porto

Marquette Sports Law Review

No abstract provided.

Solving The Settlement Puzzle In Human Rights Litigation, William J. Aceves

Faculty Scholarship

In human rights litigation, there are no formal standards to guide lawyers and their clients when they are considering whether to settle a case. Moreover, there is a paucity of published data on human rights settlements. This Article provides a quantitative assessment of recorded settlements in human rights cases litigated under the Alien Tort Statute and Torture Victim Protection Act. It examines both confidential and public settlements. It then considers how and why these cases settled. Finally, this Article proposes a set of standards for assessing proposed settlements. When cases involve fundamental rights and individuals have suffered immeasurable harms, litigants, …

Enemies, Allies, And Opportunities: The Politics Of Noblewomen’S Lawsuits In Early Modern Piedmont, Catherine Ferrari

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

This dissertation considers early modern law courts as political venues in which noble families not only asserted claims to wealth, property, and inheritance but also sought to enhance their reputation and influence. By studying the archives of elite families in Piedmont from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth centuries, I argue that noblewomen used the law to gain a political voice, defending their legal claims against other family members in highly visible conflicts in which not only their property but their standing at the court of the duke of Savoy was at stake. These women exploited legal procedures and drew on …

The Rules Of Professional Responsibility And Legal Finance: A Status Update, Anthony J. Sebok

Articles

Legal finance occurs when strangers fund litigation for profit. Traditionally looked upon with suspicion in the common law, and limited by the doctrines of champerty and maintenance, legal finance is now a thriving part of the American legal landscape. Legal finance has been promoted as a solution to the access-to-justice problems facing working and middle class Americans, as well as a new asset class for Wall Street. At the center of legal finance, however, are lawyers – not the lawyers who write the contracts for the financing – but the lawyers for the cases being financed.

Over the past decade, …

Covid And Consequences: How The Pandemic Changed Contract Interpretation And Litigation, Glenn Lutzky

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Civil Rights Catch 22s, Jonathan Feingold

Faculty Scholarship

Civil rights advocates have long viewed litigation as a vital path to social change. In many ways, it is. But in key respects that remain underexplored in legal scholarship, even successful litigation can hinder remedial projects. This perverse effect stems from civil rights doctrines that incentivize litigants (or their attorneys) to foreground community plight—such as academic underachievement or overincarceration. Rational plaintiffs, responding in kind, deploy legal narratives that tend to track racial stereotypes and regressive theories of inequality. When this occurs, even successful lawsuits can harden the structural and behavioral forces that produce and perpetuate racial inequality.

I refer to …

Technology Changes Drive Legal Changes For Antibody Patents: What Patent Examiners Can Teach Courts About The Written Description And Enablement Requirements., S. Sean Tu, Christopher M. Holman

Faculty Works

Antibody patents form the basis of some of the most valuable biotechnology products on the market. In 2020 alone, the sales of the top three drugs exceed 10 billion dollars. Two of those three drugs are monoclonal antibodies (Humira and Keytruda). In the past, patent law offered broad protection for monoclonal antibodies. As time has progressed, however, courts have narrowed the scope of antibody patents. However, very little research has been done to see how patent examiners are applying the rules of patentability to these valuable antibody patents.

We examine approximately two decades worth of antibody patents to determine how …

Muslims In Prison: Advancing The Rule Of Law Through Litigation Praxis, Spearit

Articles

Islamic ideas about justice and equality directly informed the development of prison law jurisprudence in the United States. Since the early 1960s, when federal courts began to hear claims by state prisoner-petitioners, Muslims began to look to courts to establish Islam in prison and inaugurated an ongoing campaign for civil rights. The trend is significant when considering Muslims represent a relatively small percentage of the American population. Decades of persistent litigation by Muslims in courts have been integral to developing the prisoners’ rights movement in America. The Muslim impact on prison law and culture is an underappreciated phenomenon that involves …

Litigation About Mediation: A Case Study In Institutionalization, James Coben

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

How To Conclude A Brief, Brian Wolfman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay discusses the "conclusion" section of an appellate brief and its relationship to problems of argument ordering in multi-issue appeals. The essay first reviews the relevant federal appellate rules--Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 28(a)(9) and Supreme Court Rule 24.1(j)--and explains the author's preference for short, precise, remedy-oriented conclusions, shorn of repetitive argument. It illustrates these points with examples from recently filed appellate briefs. The essay then turns to problems of argument ordering in multi-issue appellate briefs, with an emphasis on ending with a bang not a whimper, while sticking with the short, non-argumentative conclusion. The argument-ordering discussion is also …

Litigation, Legislation, And Love: The Comparative Efficacy Of Litigation And Legislation For The Expansion Of Lesbian, Gay, And Bisexual Civil Rights, Mallory Harrington

Honors College Theses

This research examines the comparative efficacy of federal appellate court decisions and federal legislation with regards to the furtherance of civil rights on the basis of sexual orientation. The research examines efficacy based upon the number of measures which have been implemented as well as the content of each measure. The research examines federal appellate and Supreme Court decisions, as well as adopted pieces of federal legislation since 1950. It also examines the likely causes of the disparities in efficacy that are indicated in this analysis. The findings of this research indicate that litigation has been much more effective at …

The Helms-Burton Act Backfires: Surprising Litigation Trends Following Title Iii’S Long-Feared Activation, Gergana S. Sivrieva

Northern Illinois University Law Review

On May 2, 2019, the Trump Administration made the historic decision to lift the suspension of Title III of the Helms-Burton Act for the first time since its enactment in 1996. Title III allows US nationals whose property was confiscated by the Cuban government to sue entities and individuals who now “traffic” in that property. Legal scholars believed this activation would trigger an avalanche of lawsuits; however, after two years of the law’s operation, only forty-some suits were filed, many by the same plaintiffs. Even more surprising is that instead of exposing foreign corporations that derive substantial benefits from the …

Parity As Comparative Capacity: A New Empirics Of The Parity Debate, Meredith R. Aska Mcbride

University of Cincinnati Law Review

In 1977, Burt Neuborne published an article in the Harvard Law Review proclaiming that parity was a “myth”—that state courts could not be trusted to enforce federal constitutional rights. For the next 15 years, the question of parity (the equivalence of state and federal courts in adjudicating federal causes of action) was at the forefront of federal courts scholarship. But in the early 1990s, the parity debate ground to a halt after important commentators proclaimed it an empirical question that, paradoxically, could not be answered by any existing empirical methods. This article argues that proposition was unfounded at the time …

The Trial Preparation Procedures–Criminal, William Rhee, L. Richard Walker

Law Faculty Scholarship

In an effort to provide scholarship immediately useful to the criminal trial advocate, this article proposes a detailed systems workflow to plan and coordinate preparing for federal criminal trials called the Trial Preparation Procedures–Criminal (or "TrialPrepPro–Criminal" for short). The TrialPrepPro–Criminal upon the Trial Preparation Procedures-Civil, expounded in an earlier article.

Although there is an abundance of anecdotal "learning from doing" trial preparation guidance, empirically testable "learning about doing" trial preparation guidance is rare. We present our TrialPrepPro to learn more about doing.

The TrialPrepPro are modeled after the battle-proven military decision-making process used, with modifications, by all U.S. military services, …

An Osm For Iot: Establishing An Office Of Special Masters To Resolve Certain Cases Involving The Internet Of Things, Abigail Perdue, Bethany Corbin

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

23rd Annual Open Government Summit: Access To Public Records Act, Open Meetings Act Powerpoint Presentation 07-30-2021, Office Of Attorney General State Of Rhode Island, Peter F. Neronha

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

United States Food Law Update: Health Care Reform, Preemption, Labeling Claims And Unpaid Interns: The Latest Battles In Food Law, A. Bryan Endres, Nicholas R. Johnson, Michaela N. Tarr

Journal of Food Law & Policy

This edition of the Food Law Update explores four legal issues arising in the first half of 2010 reflective of the diverse nature of the food law specialist. As the national debate surrounding the merits of health care reform dominated the legislative agenda, this article first will discuss the food labeling rules embedded within section 4205 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. The authors then analyze the preemptive reach of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and the Meat Inspection Act with respect to three separate California statutes regarding animal welfare standards, retail labels on …

A Bittersweet Deal For Consumers: The Unnatural Application Of Preemption To High Fructose Corn Syrup Labeling Claims, Josh Ashley

Journal of Food Law & Policy

The recent rise of consumer consciousness regarding the health qualities of foods and beverages has become something akin to common knowledge. Reflecting this rise, studies reveal that labels regarding the health qualities of a food are more likely to increase sales. And among the health labels consumers prefer, labels describing the product as natural top the list. One website reports that according to a recent study, 31.3-percent of respondents thought that "100% natural" was the best description to read on a label, compared with only 14.2-percent who thought that "100% organic" was the best description. "All natural ingredients" was the …

United States Food Law Update: Moving Toward A More Balanced Food Regulatory Regime, A. Bryan Endres, Nicholas R. Johnson

Journal of Food Law & Policy

For decades, the federal government has played a significant role in promoting healthy eating. In the early 1900s, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) promoted a foundational diet of milk, proteins, fruits and vegetables, and grains. Most Americans are at least somewhat familiar, although perhaps confused, with the more nuanced healthy eating recommendations contained in the food pyramid - first employed in 1992. And virtually every American has experienced the federally supported school lunch program. In the first half of 2011, these two iconic programs underwent significant change as part of a stepped-up effort to improve the health of …

The Powers Of The Inter-American Court Of Human Rights Towards The Implementation Of Gender Justice Laws At The National Level In South America, Kiana Therrien-Tomas Miss

Bridges: An Undergraduate Journal of Contemporary Connections

Although South America is earning international attention as an innovative global leader in various fields, it currently remains a nation steeped in traditional beliefs and practices. Despite prevailing laws against domestic violence, countless Latin American women proceed to be failed by the legal system. As South American society produces its own theory of gender justice, apprised by local realities and universally accepted norms, women's rights advocates and the Supreme Court can represent a decisive role in forming the discourse. Throughout this work, I aim to contemplate the powers of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) towards the implementation of …

Frivolous Defenses, Thomas D. Russell

Cleveland State Law Review

This Article is about civil procedure, torts, insurance, litigation, and professional ethics. The Article is the opening article in a conversation with Stanford Law Professor Nora Freeman Engstrom, who has written about the plaintiffs’ bar and settlement mill attorneys. The empirical center of this piece examines 356 answers to 298 car crash personal injury cases in Colorado’s district courts. The Article situates these cases within dispute pyramid elements, including the total number of miles-traveled within Colorado and the volume of civil litigation. The Article then analyzes the defense attorneys’ departures from the Colorado Rules of Civil Procedure, especially Rule 8. …

Law School News: Professor Of The Year 2021: Brittany Raposa 05/20/2021, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Lynette Labinger: Doctor Of Laws, Honoris Causa 05-16-2021, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Appraising Problems, Not Stuff, Chad J. Pomeroy

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming.

From The Frontlines Of The Modern Movement To End Forced Arbitration And Restore Jury Rights, F. Paul Bland, Myriam Gilles, Tanuja Gupta

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Child Support And Joint Physical Custody, Raymond C. O'Brien

Catholic University Law Review

Child custody has evolved to the point where, at a minimum, states provide a mediated process by which parents may formulate parenting plans with court-appointed assistance. At a maximum state legislatures and courts increasingly consider joint physical custody awards. While joint physical custody safeguards the fundamental rights of parents, it nonetheless prompts practical concerns in awarding child support. Today, child support begins with state statutory guidelines, but the guidelines often fail to adequately address the economic consequences of two complete residences, one supported by a parent with fewer economic resources, and the fact that oftentimes the child drifts from one …

The Federal Rule Of Civil Procedure 37(E) And Achieving Uniformity Of Case Law On Sanctions For Esi Spoliation: Focusing On The “Intent To Deprive” Culpability Under Rule 37(E)(2), Jung Won Jun, Rockyoun Ihm

Catholic University Law Review

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(e) was adopted in 2015 primarily to resolve the circuit split and promote uniformity of case law on ESI (electronically stored information) spoliation sanctions. This Article examines relevant case law under the new Rule 37(e) and finds that courts have treated similar spoliation conduct differently due to the lack of a clear standard for finding the spoliator's intent to deprive another party of the use of the destroyed ESI at issue. This inconsistency has been exacerbated by the courts’ inconsistent reliance on their inherent authority to sanction based on bad faith analyses. Therefore, this Article …