Digital Commons Network^™

Eaters, Powerless By Design, Margot J. Pollans

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Food law, including traditional food safety regulation, antihunger programs, and food system worker protections, has received increased attention in recent years as a distinct field of study. Bringing together these disparate areas of law under a single lens provides an opportunity to understand the role of law in shaping what we eat (what food is produced and where it is distributed), how much we eat, and how we think about food. The food system is rife with problems--endemic hunger, worker exploitation, massive environmental externalities, and diet-related disease. Looked at in a piecemeal fashion, elements of food law appear responsive to …

Reframing Global Biodiversity Protection After Covid-19: Is International Environmental Law Up To The Task?, Maria Antonia Tigre, Natalia Urzola, Victoria Lichet

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

In an increasingly interdependent world, the climate and biodiversity crises are, more than ever, inextricably tied to human health and the transmission of infectious diseases. The 2020 Covid-19 pandemic has irrevocably shown us that the exploitation of wild species and deforestation increases and modifies the interface between people and wildlife, leading to a spillover of diseases from wildlife to people. From a legal perspective, the gaps in international environmental law have contributed to the lack of an effective international biodiversity policy. In light of the challenges brought by the pandemic, there is now an opportunity to rethink our existing legal …

Lifting Labor’S Voice: A Principled Path Toward Greater Worker Voice And Power Within American Corporate Governance, Leo E. Strine Jr., Aneil Kovvali, Oluwatomi O. Williams

Minnesota Law Review Vols. 106:2 onward (2021-present)

In view of the decline in gainsharing by corporations with American workers over the last forty years, advocates for American workers have expressed growing interest in allowing workers to elect representatives to corporate boards. Board level representation rights have gained appeal because they are a highly visible part of codetermination regimes that operate in several successful European economies, including Germany’s, in which workers have fared better. But board level representation is just one part of the comprehensive codetermination regulatory strategy as it is practiced abroad. Without a coherent supporting framework that includes representation from the ground up, as is provided …

Disclaiming Disability, Nicole Buonocore Porter

Faculty Publications

In the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) Amendments Act of 2008, Congress ordered the courts to broadly interpret the definition of disability under the ADA. For the most part, courts have followed that instruction, but there are still too many instances in which they have not. One particularly pernicious error made by courts is relying on a plaintiff’s statement “disclaiming” her disability — that is, testifying that she does not consider herself “disabled” — to hold that she does not meet the statutory definition of disability, and therefore loses her claim. This Article addresses this error. Specifically, after cataloguing this …

Nobody's Business: A Novel Theory Of The Anonymous First Amendment, Jordan Wallace-Wolf

Law Faculty Scholarship

Namelessness is a double-edged sword. It can be a way of avoiding prejudice and focusing attention on one's ideas, but it can also be a license to defame and misinform. These points have been widely discussed. Still, the breadth of these discussions has left some of the depths unplumbed, because rarely is the question explicitly faced: what is the normative significance of namelessness itself, as opposed to its effects under different conditions? My answer is that anonymity is an evasion of responsibility for one's conduct. Persons should ordinarily be held responsible for what they do, but in some cases, where …

Weaponizing Culture To Undermine International Women’S Rights, Lan Cao

UC Law Journal

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (“UDHR”) remains an emblem of hope and change in a world filled with continuing human rights violations. Its promise, enshrined in 1948, is as relevant then as it is now—that the international community would no longer allow a state’s brutal treatment of its own citizens to go unchallenged under the mantle of “sovereignty.”

But the UDHR is being challenged by authoritarians and dictators who rightly see the UDHR as an international check on their tyranny. It is also being questioned by Western communitarians who ironically see the UDHR’s enshrinement of international human rights as …

Where’S The Beef, Turkey, Butter, Cheese, Or Other Animal Ingredient?, Virginia C. Thomas

Library Scholarly Publications

The author discusses current challenges presented by federal and state labeling laws and standards pertaining to plant-based meat alternative food products.

Liberty And Democracy Through The Administrative State: A Critique Of The Roberts Court’S Political Theory, Blake Emerson

UC Law Journal

The values of liberty and democracy repeatedly arise in recent Supreme Court opinions on administrative law. The conservative Justices have argued that the power vested in government agencies threatens individual freedom and collective self-government. This Article critiques these Justices’ use of political theory. It shows that the Justices do not faithfully and even-handedly apply the complex tradition of American political thought on which they rely. They invoke several different and competing aspects of liberty and democracy to criticize the administrative state. But because the Justices do not disentangle the various aspects of these two values from one another, they draw …

Nobody’S Business: A Novel Theory Of The Anonymous First Amendment, Jordan Wallace-Wolf

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

Namelessness is a double-edged sword. It can be a way of avoiding prejudice and focusing attention on one’s ideas, but it can also be a license to defame and misinform. These points have been widely discussed. Still, the breadth of these discussions has left some of the depths unplumbed, because rarely is the question explicitly faced: what is the normative significance of namelessness itself, as opposed to its effects under different conditions? My answer is that anonymity is an evasion of responsibility for one’s conduct. Persons should ordinarily be held responsible for what they do, but in some cases, where …

Deepfake Reckoning: Adapting Modern First Amendment Doctrine To Protect Against The Threat Posed To Democracy, Alyssa Ivancevich

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Contractual Depth, Cathy Hwang, Matthew Jennejohn

Minnesota Law Review Vols. 106:2 onward (2021-present)

Who is the intended audience of a contract? A court, who may be called upon to resolve a dispute, is one audience. Another is commercial communities, who punish breach with reputational sanctions, per the longstanding literature on informal enforcement. This Article shows how modern contracts have more intended audiences than courts and communities: instead, they are drafted with many third parties in mind, including regulators. When contracts speak to many audiences, they gain multiple layers of meaning, giving them “contractual depth.” This Article draws upon a series of novel interviews with dealmakers—law firm partners, general counsel, and executives—in a wide …

Preemption & Gender & Racial (In)Equity: Why State Tort Law Is Needed In The Cosmetic Context, Marie C. Boyd

Faculty Publications

Much of the legal scholarship on the preemption of state tort law in the food and drug context and beyond has focused on issues of federalism. While the literature has considered the relationship between state tort law and the regulatory system, it has not generally explored the impact the federal preemption of state tort law may have on women and people of color. Similarly, while the literature has grappled with gender and racial justice issues in the tort system, including in the context of tort reform, it has largely not examined the gender and racial equity issues raised by federal …

Comparative Analysis Between Saudi Arabia And Norway In Moving Beyond Fossil Fuels Towards A Sustainable Economy: A Special Emphasis On The Renewable Energy Sector, Saad Nasser Alqahtani

Dissertations & Theses

Saudi Arabia is the largest economy in the Middle East and the 18th largest in the world. The country has the world's second-largest proven petroleum reserves and is the largest exporter of petroleum. In 2016, Saudi Arabia had the third highest estimated value of natural resources at $34.4 trillion (US). However, because of the 2014 oil crash, climate change, and the development of renewable energy technology, the government has decided to transition from its complete reliance on oil revenues and to start investing heavily in other non-oil sectors, such as the renewable energy sector. The Saudi government plans to generate …

Raising Corporate Consciousness Of Employer Liability For Video Zoom While Driving, Nanci K. Carr

William & Mary Business Law Review

Imagine that you have logged onto a video Zoom meeting, and you notice that one of the participants is driving. He fumbles with the phone, trying to align the camera with his face, looking from the phone to the road ahead. Other participants on the call either say nothing or thank him for being willing to participate from his car. That is distracted driving, and if he collides with a car or pedestrian due to that distraction, each of those meeting participants could be held liable for distracting the driver. In addition, they would be witnesses to his distracted driving …

Emergency Bylaws: An Underutilized Tool For Corporate Operation During An Emergency, Grace Myers

William & Mary Business Law Review

Emergency bylaws are an underutilized tool for corporate governance whose importance has been highlighted by COVID-19. Emergency bylaws can be included within corporations’ bylaws and only operate during an “emergency” as defined by state statutes. These provisions usually give boards more agency to act during an emergency through mechanisms such as looser quorum and notice requirements. These provisions will be increasingly important during future pandemics, wars, and global warming. However, few corporations have these bylaws, and the current hodgepodge of state statutes hinders their adoption. The current state of emergency bylaws regulation and implementation raises some questions about shareholder rights …

Old Macdonald Had A Trust: How Market Consolidation In The Agricultural Industry, Spurred On By A Lack Of Antitrust Law Enforcement, Is Destroying Small Agricultural Producers, Cody Mccracken

William & Mary Business Law Review

The U.S. agricultural industry is controlled by a handful of large corporations. Unprecedented levels of market consolidation has created a power disparity, where controlling corporations alone shape markets, often to the disadvantage of small agricultural producers. A primary, and often overlooked, cause of this consolidationdriven bargaining disadvantage, and its resulting harm, can be found in the lacking enforcement of the nation’s antitrust laws. Faulty metrics and lax legal interpretations employed by regulatory agencies have permitted large corporations to grab control of nearly every sector of the industry. From the seeds farmers plant to the markets they sell their goods into; …

Eaters, Powerless By Design, Margot J. Pollans

Michigan Law Review

Food law, including traditional food safety regulation, antihunger programs, and food system worker protections, has received increased attention in recent years as a distinct field of study. Bringing together these disparate areas of law under a single lens provides an opportunity to understand the role of law in shaping what we eat (what food is produced and where it is distributed), how much we eat, and how we think about food. The food system is rife with problems— endemic hunger, worker exploitation, massive environmental externalities, and diet-related disease. Looked at in a piecemeal fashion, elements of food law appear responsive …

Searching For Truth In The First Amendment's True Threat Doctrine, Renee Griffin

Michigan Law Review

Threats of violence, even when not actually carried out, can inflict real damage. As such, state and federal laws criminalize threats in a wide range of circumstances. But threats are also speech, and free speech is broadly protected by the First Amendment. The criminalization of threats is nonetheless possible because of Supreme Court precedents denying First Amendment protection to “true threats.” Yet a crucial question remains unanswered: What counts as a true threat?

This Note examines courts’ attempts to answer this question and identifies the many ambiguities that have resulted from those attempts. In particular, this piece highlights three frontiers …

(Partial) Clarity: Eliminating The Confusion About The Regulation Of The "Fact"Ual Bases For Expert Testimony Under The Federal Rules Of Evidence, Edward J. Imwinkelried

William & Mary Law Review

Expert testimony is offered at the vast majority of trials in courts of general jurisdiction in the United States. Federal Rules of Evidence 702-06 govern the admissibility of such testimony. In its May 15, 2021, report accompanying the most recent proposed amendment to Rule 702, the Advisory Committee on the Evidence Rules asserts that “many courts” have misapplied Rule 702 by holding that questions as to whether “the expert has relied on sufficient facts or data ... are questions of weight and not admissibility.” Rule 702(b) states that to be admissible, an expert opinion must be “based on sufficient fact …

Rights Retrenchment In Immigration Law, Catherine Y. Kim

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Interrogating The Nonincorporation Of The Grand Jury Clause, Roger A. Fairfax Jr.

Cardozo Law Review

With the Supreme Court’s recent incorporation—in Ramos v. Louisiana—of the Sixth Amendment’s jury unanimity requirement to apply to the states, the project of “total incorporation” is all but complete in the criminal procedure context. Virtually every core criminal procedural protection in the Bill of Rights has been incorporated through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to constrain not only the federal government, but also the states—with one exception. The Fifth Amendment’s grand jury right now stands alone as the only federal criminal procedural right the Supreme Court has permitted states to ignore. In one of the earliest incorporation …

Critical Legal Studies And The Police, Nirej Sekhon

Cardozo Law Review

Constitutional police regulation is a complex tangle of substantive rights, remedies, and procedural rules. Together, they appear to scaffold a cohesive system of police restraint. Legal scholars tend to focus criticism on specific rules, impelled by faith that the system can be made to serve its core purpose: protecting civilians against police overreach and abuse. Drawing on critical legal studies, this Article contends that constitutional police regulation is incapable of realizing its putative purpose. Constitutional police regulation frames policing as a series of isolated, individual police-civilian encounters. This is compounded by the unpredictable interpretive interplay between substantive, remedial, and procedural …

Control, Allegiance, And Shame In Male Qing Dynasty Hairstyles, Carolle Pinkerton

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis is about the politicization of hairstyles in imperial China. They indicated conformity with social norms, or rebellion against them. This was especially true under the country’s last dynasty. The Manchu conquerors imposed their own hairstyle, the queue, on their Han Chinese subjects to make their rule palpable to China’s illiterate millions. “Hair martyrs” who refused to accept this “barbarous” hairstyle were ruthlessly eliminated. The Manchus had feared assimilation into the much larger Han population. But the introduction of one uniform male hair style for both Manchus and Han blurred the lines between the two groups. In this way …

A New Prescription For The Opioid Epidemic: 360- Degree Accountability For Pharmaceutical Companies And Their Executives, Rebecca A. Delfino

UC Law Journal

We can no longer ignore this—a national crisis resulting in almost one million American deaths, costing hundreds of millions of dollars, ravaging the health care system, and devastating state and local communities. This narrative describes the COVID-19 pandemic and something else: the epidemic of opioid addiction and abuse. In the last twenty years, the opioid epidemic claimed the lives of more than 700,000 people at the cost of more than 500 billion dollars to the economy. The COVID-19 pandemic has made the opioid epidemic worse, causing a staggering increase in opioid-related overdose deaths. Even now, on average, 140 people die …

Interrogating The Nonincorporation Of The Grand Jury Clause, Roger Fairfax

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

With the Supreme Court's recent incorporation-in Ramos v. Louisiana of the Sixth Amendment's jury unanimity requirement to apply to the states, the project of "total incorporation" is all but complete in the criminal procedure context. Virtually every core criminal procedural protection in the Bill of Rights has been incorporated through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to constrain not only the federal government but also the states with one exception. The Fifth Amendment's grand jury right now stands alone as the only federal criminal procedural right the Supreme Court has permitted states to ignore. In one of the …

Contracts In The Age Of Smart Readers, Yonathan A. Arbel, Shmuel I. Becher

Articles

What does it mean to have machines that can read, explain, and evaluate contracts? Recent advances in machine learning have led to a fundamental breakthrough in machine language models, portending a profound shift in the ability of machines to process text. Such a shift has far-reaching consequences for diverse areas of law, which are predicated on, and justified by, the existence of information barriers. Our object here is to provide a general framework for evaluating the legal and policy implications of employing language models as "smart readers"-tools that read, analyze, and assess contracts, disclosures, and privacy policies.

Synthesizing state-of-the-art developments, …

Zoonotic Pathogens From Illegally Traded Wildlife Justify Adopting The One Health Perspective In Disease Response, Marianne Allison G. Lee, Vinyl Joseph S. Valeza, Jonathan Patrick H. Yan, Ronald Allan L. Cruz

Biology Faculty Publications

Recent studies have described a direct relationship between the illegal wildlife trade (IWT) and the prevalence of zoonotic pathogens in human populations. In the Philippines, the Philippine Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (PIDSR) framework outlines the monitoring, response, and management of disease outbreaks, but needs to be updated in the wake of zoonoses from IWT. Here, we identified zoonotic pathogens that may be introduced to human populations through the IWT, pinpointed potential outbreak hotspots, and provided recommendations on how to improve the Philippines’ public health response while considering One Health. Using seizure data from the Biodiversity Management Bureau (DENR-BMB) covering …

Editorial: Tales Of Multiple Decolonisations, Prabhakar Singh

Indonesian Journal of International Law

The dialectics between descriptions and solutions should now animate TWAIL scholarship. A crucial aspect of TWAIL is to debate racism in south-south relations and law. TWAIL also needs to ask if former victims, having secured sovereignty during de-colonisation, are attempting to secure an empire.

Pro-Environmental Behaviours In Protected Areas: A Systematic Literature Review And Future Research Directions, Kourosh Esfandiar, Joanna Pearce, Ross Dowling, Edmund Goh

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Understanding pro-environmental behaviours (PEBs) in protected areas has attracted considerable research attention. This perennial issue is pertinent in reducing negative compounded impacts and/or increasing positive impacts in protected areas. This study aims to provide a review of the literature to unpack the existing publications of PEBs in protected areas and to scope future research avenues. A total of 88 empirical research journal articles were collected through Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar databases. Results showed 43.18% of the articles analysed considered PEBs as a general group of behaviours while the remaining 56.82% were specific domains of PEBs including littering, …

Strengthening The Internal Affairs Doctrine Juul Labs, Inc. V. Grove, 238 A.3d 904 (Del. Ch. 2020)., Andrew J. Meyer

Missouri Law Review

The state of Delaware plays a significant role in shaping corporate law around the country. Delaware is home to a substantial number of corporations – more than half of publicly held corporations and over sixty percent of Fortune 500 companies are incorporated in the state. Furthermore, it contains the most out-of-state incorporations – a situation where a business incorporates in Delaware but has a principal place of business in another state. For instance, the State of Missouri has ten Fortune 500 corporations with their principal place of business in the state, two of which are incorporated in Delaware. Delaware maintains …