Other Law Commons^™

Trademarks And Digital Goods, Mark Mckenna, Lucas S. Osborn

Journal Articles

Technology increasingly allows for digital distribution of goods that once might once have been offered in physical form, radically separating the design and production processes. That separation has potentially destabilizing consequences for trademark law, which overwhelmingly has been oriented toward indications of the origin of physical goods. For one thing, digitization brings much more of trademark law into contact with the Supreme Court's Dastar decision, raising difficult questions about whether, and under what circumstances, digital files count as “goods” for Lanham Act purposes. More broadly, a world of increasing digitization implicates concerns about the boundaries of trademark law vis-à-vis other …

Checks, Balances, And Nuclear Waste, Bruce R. Huber

Journal Articles

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 established a process for siting and constructing repositories for nuclear waste. When Nevada’s Yucca Mountain emerged as a likely repository site, that state’s officials and allies exercised the numerous political and legal checks afforded by the Act and appear, at least for the time being, to have defeated the selection. But Nevada’s victory may well be the nation’s loss. In the absence of a national waste repository, nuclear power plant operators have no choice but to store spent nuclear fuel on site, where it presents a number of risks not contemplated by the …

Tax Treaties And The Taxation Of Services In The Absence Of Physical Presence, Michael Kirsch

Journal Articles

It is old news that modern technological developments have strained long‐standing international tax policies and principles. Tax treaties have attempted to keep pace by fitting these new developments within the existing framework. This brief article addresses one aspect of technological developments that can directly affect individual taxpayers—the increasing ability to deliver personal services electronically across borders, without the need for the service provider to have a physical presence in the “source” country. In particular, it focuses on recent developments with the U.N. Model, which may allow source‐based taxation of at least some types of services income even in the absence …

Congressional Originalism, Amy Coney Barrett, John Copeland` Nagle

Journal Articles

Precedent poses a notoriously difficult problem for originalists. Some decisions – so-called super precedents – are so well baked into government that reversing them would wreak havoc. Originalists have been pressed to either acknowledge that their theory could generate major disruption or identify a principled exception to their insistence that judges are bound to enforce the Constitution’s original public meaning. While the stylized process of adjudication narrows the questions presented to the Court, in Congress the question of a measure’s constitutionality is always on the table. And because framing constraints do not narrow the relevant and permissible grounds of decision …

Holding Banks Liable Under The Anti-Terrorism Act For Providing Financial Services To Terrorists: An Ineffective Legal Remedy In Need Of Reform, Jimmy Gurule

Journal Articles

Anti-terrorism Act (“ATA”), 18 U.S.C. § 2333(a), provides a private right of action for any United States national injured by an act of international terrorism. The purpose of the statute is to deter acts of terrorism by punishing terrorists and their financial supporters “where it hurts them most: at their lifeline, their funds.” However, the threat of a large civil monetary judgment is unlikely to have a deter- rent effect on foreign terrorists or terrorist organizations that “are unlikely to have assets, much less assets in the United States.” As a result, ATA lawsuits have been filed almost exclusively against …

Suspension And Delegation, Amy Coney Barrett

Journal Articles

A suspension of the writ of habeas corpus empowers the President to indefinitely detain those suspected of endangering the public safety. In other words, it works a temporary suspension of civil liberties. Given the gravity of this power, the Suspension Clause narrowly limits the circumstances in which it may be exercised: the writ may be suspended only in cases of "rebellion or invasion" and when "the public Safety may require it. " Congress alone can suspend the writ; the Executive cannot declare himself authorized to detain in violation of civil rights. Despite the traditional emphasis on the importance of exclusive …

Arthur Soden's Legacy: The Origins And Early History Of Baseball's Reserve System, Edmund P. Edmonds

Journal Articles

The article focuses on the nineteenth century evolution of the U.S. baseball reserves system. It mentions that the early history of the reserve clause establishes a relationship with sports collective bargaining agreements. It notes that its basic structure stems from a dispute between Boston owner Arthur Soden and baseball players James O'Rourke and George Wright. It also emphasizes on discipline imposed to the players who abandon their contracts to seek higher salaries from a different team.

The Limitations Of Majoritarian Land Assembly, Daniel B. Kelly

Journal Articles

In their article, Land Assembly Districts, Professors Michael Heller and Rick Hills address the collective action problem arising from excessively fragmented land. They propose an innovative solution: Land Assembly Districts (or LADs). In this Article, I raise several concerns regarding LADs in particular and majoritarian land assembly in general. LADs rely on majority voting by a neighborhood's existing owners. Yet majority voting, coupled with the possibility of heterogeneity, means that LADs may both approve socially undesirable assemblies and disapprove socially desirable ones. LADs also permit owners to bargain over a project's surplus. But such bargaining creates additional costs for developers, …

Form, Function, And Justiciability, Anthony J. Bellia

Journal Articles

In A Theory of Justiciability, Professor Jonathan Siegel provides an insightful functional analysis of justiciability doctrines. He well demonstrates that justiciability doctrines are ill suited to serve certain purposes-for example, ensuring that litigants have adverse interests in disputes that federal courts hear. Professor Siegel proceeds to identify what he believes to be one plausible purpose of justiciability doctrines: to enable Congress to decide when individuals with "abstract" (or "undifferentiated") injuries may use federal courts to require that federal law be enforced. Ultimately, he rejects this justification because (1) congressional power to create justiciability where it would not otherwise exist proves …

The "Public Use" Requirement In Eminent Domain Law: A Rationale Based On Secret Purchases And Private Influence, Daniel B. Kelly

Journal Articles

This Article provides a rationale for understanding and interpreting the public use requirement within eminent domain law. The rationale is based on two factors. First, while the government often needs the power of eminent domain to avoid the problem of strategic holdout, private parties are generally able to purchase property through secret buying agents. The availability of these undisclosed agents makes the use of eminent domain for private parties unnecessary and indeed undesirable. The government, however, is ordinarily unable to make secret purchases because its plans are subject to democratic deliberation and thus publicly known in advance. Second, while the …

The Practical Impact Of The Common Good In Catholic Social Thought, John J. Coughlin

Journal Articles

As an introduction to the general panel discussion, I would like to pose the following question. Is the notion of the common good in Catholic social thought merely a nice sounding theory, or does it have any real and practical impact?

The Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes offers this definition of the common good: "the sum of those conditions" which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily. This notion of the common good places a primacy on the flourishing of individual human beings-spiritually, intellectually, culturally, and financially-through participation in …

Of Characterization And Other Matters: Thoughts About Multiple Damages, G. Robert Blakey

Journal Articles

Modern economic analysis owes too much to the conceit of Bentham and his followers in their arrogant reliance on disembodied reason. In fact, they have "shaped the course of law reform" for large segments of the modern world; unfortunately, they "neglected all the complex social evolution which ... [went into] the making of... [that] world and individuals" in it; and for that "reason..., they considered that the study of history was a matter of minor importance." Bentham and his many followers too often tend to rely on a handful of assumptions and reason alone–coupled with a veneer of mathematics–to describe …

Social Justice And Liberation, Robert E. Rodes

Journal Articles

Justice is the virtue we practice by giving people what is due them. Therefore, there is a problem of assignability when we consider an unjust social order: What is due from an individual beneficiary of that order to an individual victim? That question is answered by the concept of social justice: What all of us individually owe to each individual victim of the institutions now in place is our best efforts to reform those institutions. The first half of this paper analyzes the traditional arguments for and the conservative arguments against social justice as the answer to this problem of …

Faith In The Republic: A Frances Lewis Law Center Conversation, Thomas L. Shaffer, Stanley Hauerwas, Sanford Levinson, Mark V. Tushnet, Harlan R. Beckley, Lewis H. Larue, Ann M. Massie, David K. Millon, R. Neville Richardson, O. Kendall White

Journal Articles

This is a spontaneous conversation discussing Hauserwas’ singular political theology in response to Levinson and Tushnet’s constitutional jurisprudence. It developed into a highly interesting debate concerning constitutional faith. This conversation was recorded at Washington and Lee’s Law Center on December 11, 1987.

The Vietnamese Refugee And U.S. Law, Tang Thi Thanh Trai Le, Michael J. Esser

Journal Articles

Vietnamese refugees face a series of hurdles in entering the United States. Questions of fear of persecution, time of persecution and illegal departure face the refugees generally. Those leaving Vietnam for economic reasons and those displaced within Vietnam face additional difficulties. However, careful application of United States immigration law should accommodate the Vietnamese refugees as well as the policies behind the laws.

Obscenity In The Supreme Court: A Note On Jacobellis V. Ohio, Thomas L. Shaffer, Joseph O'Meara

Journal Articles

This article suggests that the determination of "obscenity" in cases should be sent to the jury to determine under proper instructions rather than judges because the jury reflects the community's morals and mores more truly than even the wisest of judges. The jury is the mechanism provided by the common law for determination of questions involving the presence or absence of due care, reasonableness, prudence, decency and other concepts reflecting the common sense and/or conscience of a community. Specifically, this article argues that the obscenity determination should be determined with reference to the time and place of the community of …