Law and Society Commons^™

Privacy In Pandemic: Law, Technology, And Public Health In The Covid-19 Crisis, Tiffany C. Li

Law Faculty Scholarship

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused millions of deaths and disastrous consequences around the world, with lasting repercussions for every field of law, including privacy and technology. The unique characteristics of this pandemic have precipitated an increase in use of new technologies, including remote communications platforms, healthcare robots, and medical Al. Public and private actors alike are using new technologies, like heat sensing, and technologically influenced programs, like contact tracing, leading to a rise in government and corporate surveillance in sectors like healthcare, employment, education, and commerce. Advocates have raised the alarm for privacy and civil liberties violations, but the emergency …

What Constitution Says About Peaceful Transfer Of Power, John M. Greabe

Law Faculty Scholarship

[excerpt] I recently was asked whether the Constitution requires a peaceful transfer of power following an election. Sadly, the questions is not merely theoretical. President Trump has stated that, if he loses the upcoming election, it will be through fraud. And he has made it clear that he will be unrestrained in his response to any efforts to oust him from office through an election he pronounces fraudulent.

The question of whether the Constitution requires a peaceful transfer of power prompts consideration of how we should conceptualize our Constitution. Is the Constitution merely the document that was written in 1787, …

Is The Right To Abortion Still Specially Protected?, John M. Greabe

Law Faculty Scholarship

[excerpt] Last week, in June Medical Services v. Russo, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that once again raises questions about the extent to which the Constitution protects a woman's right to end a pregnancy. But the way in which the court resolves the case is likely to reveal more than just its views on abortion rights.

This column, the first in a series of three, describes the legal and historical path that led to June Medical Services. The next two will explore what the case suggests about, respectively, how the current court will treat constitutional …

Separation Of Powers, Partisanship And Impeachment: How Can We Overcome The Partisan Propaganda?, John M. Greabe

Law Faculty Scholarship

[excerpt] "Our Constitutional system divides power horizontally, among the three branches of the federal government, and vertically, between the federal government and the states. We refer to the former division as our "separation of powers" and the latter as our "federalism."

Investment In Latin America Will Limit Migration North, Ryan J. O'Riordan, Stanley P. Kowalski

Law Faculty Scholarship

The refugee crisis at the US Southern Border is due to multiple compounding factors: Latin America’s over-reliance on commodities, failure to economically diversify to innovation, and a lack of coherent US strategic engagement with the region. The situation is hemispheric; imploding states and a serious humanitarian calamity loom ever larger on the southern horizon. Since this represents a long-term problem requiring strategic and sustainable development initiatives, a new Alliance for Progress for the 21st Century is proposed which will build partnerships to advance innovation-driven development across the region.

Ok, Google, Will Artificial Intelligence Replace Human Lawyering?, Amy Vorenberg, Julie A. Oseid, Melissa Love Koenig

Law Faculty Scholarship

Will Artificial Intelligence (AI) replace human lawyering? The answer is no. Despite worries that AI is getting so sophisticated that it could take over the profession, there is little cause for concern. Indeed, the surge of AI in the legal field has crystalized the real essence of effective lawyering. The lawyer’s craft goes beyond what AI can do because we listen with empathy to clients’ stories, strategize to find that story that might not be obvious, thoughtfully use our imagination and judgment to decide which story will appeal to an audience, and creatively tell those winning stories.

This article reviews …

Outliving Love: Marital Estrangement In An African Insurance Market, Casey Golomski

Anthropology

Marital estrangement and formal divorce are vital conjunctures for married women’s kinship relations and life course, where a horizon of future possibilities are revalued and negotiated at the interstices of custom, law, and social and ritual obligations. In this article, after delineating the forms of customary and civil marriage and the possibilities for divorce or estrangement from each, I describe how some married women in Swaziland and South Africa mediate this complex social field for their children and families through pensions and continuing to pay for their partners’ insurance coverage. This was not solely out of avarice to reap future …

Lockdown In Manchester Is A Slippery Slope, Risa Evans

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] "Liberty. Security. Both are essential to a good life. But of course, neither is absolute, and at times circumstances demand that a society trade some measure of liberty for security. The tricky part is deciding when and how to draw the line."

Counterfeits, Copying And Class, Ann Bartow

Law Faculty Scholarship

Consumers who want to express themselves by wearing contemporary clothing styles should not have to choose between expensive brands and counterfeit products. There should be a clear distinction in trademark law between illegal, counterfeit goods and perfectly legal (at least with respect to trademark law) "knockoffs," in which aesthetically functional design attributes have been copied but trademarks have not. Toward that end, as a normative matter, the aesthetic features of products should not be registrable or protectable as trademarks or trade dress, regardless of whether they have secondary meaning, just as functional attributes of a utilitarian nature are not eligible …

Review Essay, Property Outlaws: How Squatters, Pirates, And Protesters Improve The Law Of Ownership By Eduardo Moisés Peñalver And Sonia K. Katyal, Ann Bartow

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] "This book challenges the notion that rigidly fostering stability in the private ownership of property is the only appropriate goal of the legal system. The authors assert that dynamic sociopolitical responses to civil disobedience by lawbreakers sometimes propel beneficial legal reforms in a wide array of contexts. Property outlaws with clean hands and good hearts, they argue, can productively draw attention to the need to reform ossified property laws. In the words sometimes attributed to the historical rock star of successful civil disobedience Mohandas Ghandi: “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then …

The Moral Of The Story: The Power Of Narrative To Inspire And Sustain Scholarship, Amy Vorenberg

Law Faculty Scholarship

This article describes how I discovered the power of story as a tool to inspire scholarship. We think of stories as a means to bring life to legal cases in a way that grounds them and makes them visceral and comprehensible. We use storytelling to teach our students - showing how the emotive power of a story can persuade. However, stories can also serve a different function. In my search for a way to inspire and sustain my own writing, I found out that a good story can be the source of a writer’s motivation to both create and sustain …

Modeling The Effects Of Peremptory Challenges On Jury Selection And Jury Verdicts, Roger Allen Ford

Law Faculty Scholarship

Although proponents argue that peremptory challenges make juries more impartial by eliminating “extreme” jurors, studies testing this theory are rare and inconclusive. For this article, two formal models of jury selection are constructed, and various selection procedures are tested, assuming that attorneys act rationally rather than discriminate based on animus. The models demonstrate that even when used rationally, peremptory challenges can distort jury decision making and undermine verdict reliability. Peremptory challenges systematically shift jurors toward the majority view of the population by favoring median jurors over extreme jurors. If the population of potential jurors is skewed in favor of conviction …

New-School Trademark Dilution: Famous Among The Juvenile Consuming Public, Alexandra J. Roberts

Law Faculty Scholarship

The recently enacted Trademark Dilution Revision Act of 2006 recalibrated the degree of fame necessary to garner protection: the TDRA applies only to a mark "widely recognized by the general consuming public of the United States as a designation of source of the goods or services of the mark’s owner." By privileging those major players who succeed in turning their brands into household names, the TDRA strengthens incentives for mark-owners to ensure their logos and brand names are well-recognized not only among adult consumers, but also among children. This Article examines a set of marketing behaviors aimed at children that …

A Miscarriage Of Juvenile Justice: A Modern Day Parable Of The Unintended Results Of Bad Lawmaking, Amy Vorenberg

Law Faculty Scholarship

Sensationalized cases increasingly create the context for public policy discussion. Stories about violent crime are a common feature of the local evening news and their emotional nature can often create the hook politicians need to showcase their “tough on crime” agendas. Often anecdotal and lurid, stories of criminal misdeeds are widely used to convince the public of a need to create or change laws. This article demonstrates the perils of making law by extrapolating from a few random, albeit attention-grabbing, events. Specifically, the article examines the impact of a 1995 change in New Hampshire state law that lowered the age …

Trademarks Of Privilege: Naming Rights And The Physical Public Domain, Ann Bartow

Law Faculty Scholarship

This paper critiques the branding and labeling of the physical public domain with the names of corporations, commercial products, and individuals. It suggests that under-recognized public policy conflicts exist between the naming policies and practices of political subdivisions, trademark law, and right of publicity doctrines. It further argues that naming acts are often undemocratic and unfair, illegitimately appropriate public assets for private use, and constitute a limited form of compelled speech. It concludes by considering alternative mechanisms by which the names of public facilities could be chosen.

Some Peer-To-Peer, Democratically And Voluntarily Produced Thoughts About 'The Wealth Of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets And Freedom,' By Yochai Benkler, Ann Bartow

Law Faculty Scholarship

In this review essay, Bartow concludes that The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom by Yochai Benkler is a book well worth reading, but that Benkler still has a bit more work to do before his Grand Unifying Theory of Life, The Internet, and Everything is satisfactorily complete. It isn't enough to concede that the Internet won't benefit everyone. He needs to more thoroughly consider the ways in which the lives of poor people actually worsen when previously accessible information, goods and services are rendered less convenient or completely unattainable by their migration online. Additionally, the …