Law Commons^™

Place-Based Versus Practice-Based Norms For American Lawyers: "It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)", James E. Moliterno

Scholarly Articles

This Article acknowledges the growing trend toward practice-based lawyer norms, points out how it allows interaction between the existing place-based norms and the new practice-based norms, and compares this movement with the existing regulatory conditions outside the US. If there is movement from the world as we know it (place-based norms) to a world as it may come to be (practice-based norms), is the change tragic, inevitable, risky, in line with the rest of the global legal profession, or all of the above and more? Specifically, how would such an evolution affect the core duty of lawyer-client confidentiality?

The Three Laws: The Chinese Communist Party Throws Down The Data Regulation Gauntlet, William Chaskes

Washington and Lee Law Review

Criticism of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) runs a wide gamut. Accusations of human rights abuses, intellectual property theft, authoritarian domestic policies, disrespecting sovereign borders, and propaganda campaigns all have one common factor: the CCP’s desire to control information. Controlling information means controlling data. Lurking beneath the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) tumultuous relationship with the rest of the world is the fight between nations to control their citizens’ data while also keeping it out of the hands of adversaries. The CCP’s Three Laws are its newest weapon in this data war.

One byproduct of the CCP’s emphasis on controlling …

A Tale Of Two Regulators: Antitrust Implications Of Progressive Decentralization In Blockchain Platforms, Evan Miller

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

Competition regulators have identified the potential for blockchain technology to disrupt traditional sponsor-led platforms, like app stores, that have received increased antitrust scrutiny. Enforcement actions by securities regulators, however, have forced blockchain-based platforms to adopt a strategy of progressive decentralization, delaying decentralization objectives in favor of the centralized model that competition regulators hope they will disrupt. This regulatory tension, and the implications for blockchain’s procompetitive potential, have yet to be explored. This Article first identifies the origin of this tension and its consequences through a competition law lens, and then recommends that competition regulators account for this tension in monitoring …

Personal Jurisdiction And National Sovereignty, Ray Worthy Campbell

Washington and Lee Law Review

State sovereignty, once seemingly sidelined in personal jurisdiction analysis, has returned with a vengeance. Driven by the idea that states must not offend rival states in their jurisdictional reach, some justices have looked for specific targeting of individual states as individual states by the defendant in order to justify an assertion of personal jurisdiction. To allow cases to proceed based on national targeting alone, they argue, would diminish the sovereignty of any state that the defendant had specifically targeted.

This Article looks for the first time at how this emphasis on state sovereignty limits national sovereignty, especially where alien defendants …

Rehabilitating The Nuisance Injunction To Protect The Environment, Doug Rendleman

Washington and Lee Law Review

The Trump Administration has reversed the federal government’s role of protecting the environment. The reversal focuses attention on states’ environmental capacity. This Article advocates more vigorous state environmental tort remedies for nuisance and trespass. An injunction is the superior remedy in most successful environmental litigation because it orders correction and improvement. Two anachronistic barriers to an environmental injunction are the New York Court of Appeals’ decision, Boomer v. Atlantic Cement, and Calabresi and Melamed’s early and iconic law-and-economics article, One View of the Cathedral. This Article examines and criticizes both because, by subordinating the injunction to money damages, they undervalue …

Justice Kavanaugh, Lorenzo V. Sec, And The Post-Kennedy Supreme Court, Matthew C. Turk, Karen E. Woody

Scholarly Articles

This Article analyzes a recent Supreme Court case, Lorenzo v. Securities and Exchange Commission, and explains why it provides a valuable window into the Court's future now that Justice Kennedy has retired and his seat filled by Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Lorenzo is an important case that raises fundamental interpretative questions about the reach of federal securities statutes. But most significant is its unique procedural posture: when the Supreme Court issues its decision on Lorenzo in 2019, Justice Kavanaugh will be recused while the other eight Justices rule on a lower court opinion from the D.C. Circuit in which he wrote …

Warfare As Regulation, Robert Knowles

Washington and Lee Law Review

The United States government’s national security activities, including the use of force, consume more than half of all federal discretionary spending and are carried out by the world’s largest bureaucracy. Yet existing scholarship treats these activities as conduct to be regulated, rather than as forms of regulatory action.

This Article introduces a new paradigm for depicting what agencies involved in national security do. It posits that, like other agencies, the national security bureaucracy is best understood to be engaging in regulatory activity—by targeting, detaining, interrogating, and prosecuting enemies; patrolling the border; and conducting surveillance and covert actions. Also, like other …

Between Sin And Redemption: Duty, Purpose, And Regulation In Religious Corporations, Brett H. Mcdonnell

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

An Examination Of Trans Fat Labeling: Splitting The Third & Ninth Circuit, Jack Gainey

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

At first glance, consumer claims alleging misleading labeling would seem to find a simple resolution. Under 21 U.S.C. § 343, which governs misbranded food, a food product is misbranded if “its labeling is false or misleading.” However, controversial interpretation of seemingly straightforward statutory language, together with evolving case law, have blurred a once clear picture. Disagreement over the federal preemption of consumer claims regarding trans fat, underscored by a dispute regarding standing, have combined to create a divergence of opinions between courts across the country.

In 2011, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California considered a …

Leidos And The Roberts Court's Improvident Securities Law Docket, Matthew C. Turk, Karen E. Woody

Scholarly Articles

For its October 2017 term, the U.S. Supreme Court took up a noteworthy securities law case, Leidos, Inc. v. Indiana Public Retirement System. The legal question presented in Leidos was whether a failure to comply with a regulation issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Item 303 of Regulation S-K (Item 303), can be grounds for a securities fraud claim pursuant to Rule 10b-5 and the related Section 10(b) of the 1934 Securities Exchange Act. Leidos teed up a significant set of issues because Item 303 concerns one of the more controversial corporate disclosures mandated by the SEC—an …

Voluntary Disclosure Fostering Overenforcement And Overcriminalization Of The Fcpa, Karen E. Woody

Scholarly Articles

Professor Peter Reilly’s article, Incentivizing Corporate America to Eradicate Transnational Bribery Worldwide: Federal Transparency and Voluntary Disclosure Under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, 67 Fla. L. Rev. 1683 (2015), challenges the notion that voluntary disclosure of potential Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) violations to the government is always the best course of action for a company. In a world where whistleblowers can receive a bounty for information provided to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC),2 self-reporting is a critical, high-pressure decision that each company must undertake when faced with potential FCPA liability.

This Article takes a broader look at …

Trademark Laundering, Useless Patents, And Other Ip Challenges For The Marijuana Industry, Sam Kamin, Viva R. Moffat University Of Denver College Of Law

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

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 …

Did New York State Just Anoint Virtual Currencies By Proposing To Regulate Them, Or Will Regulation Spoil Them For Some?, Sarah Jane Hughes

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

This Essay previews issues raised by the general subject of regulating virtual currencies and the specific efforts of New York State’s Department of Financial Services’ proposed Virtual Currency Regulatory Framework (the BitLicense) in particular. It focuses on five topics in the proposal and their interplay with the current regulation of “money services” and “money transmission” in other states, using the Commonwealth of Virginia and the State of Washington approaches on a few common topics for comparison purposes. It also asks whether regulation of virtual currencies is likely to cause more widespread adoption of virtual currencies or to frustrate the proponents …

Dynamic Forest Federalism, Blake Hudson

Washington and Lee Law Review

State and local governments have long maintained regulatory authority to manage natural resources, and most subnational governments have politically exercised that authority to some degree. Policy makers, however, have increasingly recognized that the dynamic attributes of natural resources make them difficult to manage on any one scale of government. As a result, the nation has shifted toward multilevel governance known as “dynamic federalism” for many if not most regulatory subject areas, especially in the context of the natural environment. The nation has done so both legally and politically—the constitutional validity of expanded federal regulatory authority over resources has consistently been …

Virginia's Targeted Regulations Of Abortion Providers: The Attempt To Regulation Abortion Out Of Existence, Katharine Greenier, Rebecca Glenberg

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Grade Incomplete: Examining The Securities And Exchange Commission's Attempt To Implement Credit Rating And Certain Corporate Governance Reforms Of Dodd-Frank, Tod Perry, Randle B. Pollard

Scholarly Articles

Following the financial crisis of 2007-2009, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Act with stated goals, among others, of creating a sound economic foundation and protecting consumers. The Dodd-Frank Act creates several new agencies and restructures the financial regulatory system, yet controversies remain on the promulgation of new rules and the overall effectiveness in accomplishing the stated goals of the Act.

This Article briefly discusses the status of rulemaking by newly created agencies and the restructured financial regulatory system mandated by the Dodd- Frank Act three years after its passage. Next, we focus on certain aspects of the SEC and its charge …

Deep Water Offshore Oil Exploration Regulation: The Need For A Global Environmental Regulation Regime, Naama Hasson

Washington and Lee Journal of Energy, Climate, and the Environment

Government regulation of deepwater offshore explorations has found it either difficult to evaluate the environmental impact, or too costly to perform the required review.1 Corporate self-regulation without effective government oversight will not adequately reduce the risk of accidents within the offshore oil exploration industry, nor will it ensure that corporations prepare effectively to respond to a major spill. The potential, near-term, financial benefit for the oil company prevails over the lowprobability risk that a major spill will occur. Recognizing that current domestic regulation lacks effective, continuous monitoring of complex offshore operations, another form of regulation appears necessary. If already-emerging principles …

Fractured Focus: Tribal Energy Development And The Regulatory Contest Over Hydraulic Fracturing In Indian Country, Mitchell Davis

Washington and Lee Journal of Energy, Climate, and the Environment

No abstract provided.

Drugs, Dignity And Danger: Human Dignity As A Constitutional Constraint To Limit Overcriminalization, Michal Buchhandler-Raphael

Scholarly Articles

This Article proposes a constitutional constraint to limit criminalization of victimless crimes and, particularly, to alleviate the pressures on the criminal justice system emanating from its continuous “war on drugs.” To accomplish this goal, the Article explores the concept of human dignity, a fundamental right yet to be invoked in the context of substantive criminal law. The U.S. Supreme Court’s jurisprudence invokes conflicting accounts of human dignity: liberty as dignity, on the one hand, and communitarian virtue as dignity, on the other. However, the Court has not yet developed a workable mechanism to reconcile these competing concepts in cases where …

Just A Little Bit Of History Repeating: The California Model Of Marijuana Legalization And How It Might Affect Racial And Ethnic Minorities, Thomas J. Moran

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.