Digital Commons Network^™

Pay-To-Playlist: The Commerce Of Music Streaming, Christopher Buccafusco, Kristelia A. García

Publications

Payola—sometimes referred to as “pay-for-play”—is the undisclosed payment, or acceptance of payment, in cash or in kind, for promotion of a song, album, or artist. Some form of pay-for-play has existed in the music industry since the nineteenth century. Most prominently, the term has been used to refer to the practice of musicians and record labels paying radio DJs to play certain songs in order to boost their popularity and sales. Since the middle of the twentieth century, the FCC has regulated this behavior—ostensibly because of its propensity to harm consumers and competition—by requiring that broadcasters disclose such payments.

As …

Realizing Diversity, Sustainability, And Stakeholder Capitalism, Peter H. Huang

Publications

Stakeholder capitalism conceives of capitalism with companies maximizing their long-term value, while considering in addition to the interests of their shareholders, also the interests of all their other stakeholders. Examples of such additional stakeholders include customers, employees, communities, creditors, competitors, society at large, and our planet. America today does not have stakeholder capitalism. Instead, America presently has shareholder capitalism, in which publicly held corporations only maximize their stock value to shareholders.

This Essay analyzes proposals for the United States Securities Exchange Commission to require that all reporting companies make periodic mandatory Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) disclosures of comparable, standardized, …

The Case For Data Privacy Rights (Or 'Please, A Little Optimism'), Margot E. Kaminski

Publications

No abstract provided.

Endangered Claims: How The U.S. Civil Procedure System Mimics The Wild, Suzette M. Malveaux

Publications

No abstract provided.

Disaster Vulnerability, Lisa Grow, Brigham Daniels, Douglas M. Spencer, Chantel Sloan, Natalie Blades, Teresa Gomez

Publications

Vulnerability drives disaster law, yet the literature lacks both an overarching analysis of the different aspects of vulnerability and a nuanced examination of the factors that shape disaster outcomes. Though central to disaster law and policy, vulnerability often lurks in the shadows of a disaster, evident only once the worst is past and the bodies have been counted. The COVID-19 pandemic is a notable exception to this historical pattern: from the beginning of the pandemic, it has been clear that the virus poses different risks to different people, depending on vulnerability variables. This most recent pandemic experience thus provides a …

Introduction: Privacy Studies, Surveillance Law, Scott Skinner-Thompson

Publications

This Dialogue section examines perspectives on how privacy law scholarship and surveillance scholarship can be further enriched with more critical reflection and discussion between the disciplines and includes valuable contributions from thought leaders in each field.

Roundtable Two: Environmental Law Education: New Techniques In The Classroom And Beyond, Lincoln Davies, Karrigan Bork, Sarah Krakoff

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Press’S Responsibilities As A First Amendment Institution, Helen Norton

Publications

No abstract provided.

Criminal Law Exceptionalism, Benjamin Levin

Publications

For over half a century, U.S. prison populations have ballooned and criminal codes have expanded. In recent years, a growing awareness of mass incarceration and the harms of criminal law across lines of race and class has led to a backlash of anti-carceral commentary and social movement energy. Academics and activists have adopted a critical posture, offering not only small-bore reforms, but full-fledged arguments for the abolition of prisons, police, and criminal legal institutions. Where criminal law was once embraced by commentators as a catchall solution to social problems, increasingly it is being rejected, or at least questioned. Instead of …

The Truman Show: The Fraudulent Origins Of The Former Presidents Act, Paul F. Campos

Publications

When President Donald Trump was impeached for a second time, many commenters pointed out that, if Trump were to be convicted by the Senate, he would likely lose millions of dollars in future taxpayer-funded benefits. These benefits are provided to ex-presidents by the Former Presidents Act, a 1958 statute of considerable political significance and ongoing controversy, that nevertheless has to this point been ignored completely by the legal academic literature.

This Article represents the first sustained discussion of the FPA in that literature. It concludes that the statute should be revoked — and it centers its critique on the law’s …

Against Domestic Violence: Public And Private Prosecution Of Batterers, Carolyn B. Ramsey

Publications

No abstract provided.

Tax's Digital Labor Dilemma, Amanda Parsons

Publications

Digitalization has reshaped the relationship between companies and their customers and users. Customers and users increasingly serve a dual role. They are not only consumers but also producers, creating data and content. They are a value-creating workforce, functioning as “digital laborers.”

Digital laborers’ value creation highlights that there are two parts to the question of whether multinational companies are paying their “fair share” of taxes—one of amount and one of location. First, are companies’ total tax bills paid across all countries in line with their global income? Second, is taxing authority over multinational companies’ income being divided amongst countries in …

Victims’ Rights Revisited, Benjamin Levin

Publications

This Essay responds to Bennett Capers's article, "Against Prosecutors." I offer four critiques of Capers’s proposal to bring back private prosecutions: (A) that shifting power to victims still involves shifting power to the carceral state and away from defendants; (B) that defining the class of victims will pose numerous problems; C) that privatizing prosecution reinforces a troubling impulse to treat social problems at the individual level; and (D) broadly, that these critiques suggest that Capers has traded the pathologies of “public” law for the pathologies of “private” law. Further, I argue that the article reflects a new, left-leaning vision of …

Identity By Committee, Scott Skinner-Thompson

Publications

Even in school districts with relatively permissive approaches to defining and embodying gender, the identities of transgender and gender variant students are often governed by complex regulatory protocols. Ensuring that a student is able to live their gender at school can involve input from a host of purported stakeholders including medical providers, mental health professionals, school administrators, the student’s parents, and even the broader community. In essence, trans and gender variant students’ identities are governed by committee, which reduces students’ control over their lives, inhibits self-determination, constricts the scope of permissible gender identities, subjects them to incredible degrees of state …

Essential But Ignored: Covid-19 Litigation And The Meatpacking Industry, Alexia Brunet Marks

Publications

The spread of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) among meatpacking employees forced closures and slowdowns at many plants across the United States. As the meatpacking giants JBS, Smithfield, and Tyson became hotbeds for COVID-19, national meat production plummeted. To forestall further supply chain disruptions, former President Trump passed an Executive Order compelling plants to continue operating as “essential businesses.” As work continued, employees reported that social distancing and mask-wearing were not being enforced, managers were pressuring sick employees to work and not revealing co-worker’s infections, and an overall lack of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) or training to reduce the risk …

A Human Rights Approach To Cultural Property: Repatriating The Yaqui Maaso Kova, Kristen A. Carpenter

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Parthenon Marbles Case And The Universal Museum Myth: Policies And Politics: Panel 4: Cultural Property And International Human Rights Trends, Sandy Cobden, Leila Amineddoleh, Kristen A. Carpenter, Lawrence Kaye

Publications

No abstract provided.

Quantum Technology And Human Rights: An Agenda For Collaboration, Vivek Krishnamurthy

Publications

Quantum technologies have the potential to transform many aspects of our lives as they come into wider use, but how do we ensure that these technologies promote human rights instead of harming them? This article will draw lessons from our collective experience in managing the human rights impacts of internet technologies to help the quantum science and technology community build and develop technologies that respect and promote the fundamental rights of all people.

Legal Research Instruction And Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion: Insights For Classroom Management In Person And Online, Clanitra Stewart Nejdl, Shamika Dalton

Publications

Legal issues related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are critical for attorneys to recognize and understand in the practice of law. Legal research is one part of the law school curriculum through which students can significantly examine DEI issues. This article provides practical insights for managing legal research classrooms to support productive discussions about legal issues affecting diverse groups, including race, gender, sexual orientation, and religion. The authors explore DEI-related classroom management for in-person, online, and hybrid formats; provide classroom management scenarios to consider; and discuss how each scenario might be handled to maintain a healthy classroom environment.

Addressing Pollution From More Frequent, But Still Exceptional, Wildfires, Jonathan Skinner-Thompson, Kristi M. Smith

Publications

No abstract provided.

Mind The (Participation) Gap: Vouchers, Voting, And Visibility, Abby K. Wood, Christopher S. Elmendorf, Douglas M. Spencer, Nicholas G. Napolio

Publications

This study exploits the introduction of a new type of public financing of elections—campaign finance vouchers—to estimate the effects of neighborhood-level political cross-pressure on citizens’ decisions to participate in low-cost political activities which vary in their publicness: voting (private) and vouchering (public). Does proximity to ideologically divergent neighbors affect one’s use of publicly disclosed campaign finance vouchers? We find that cross-pressured individuals are slightly more likely to use a campaign finance voucher than similarly situated individuals who are ideologically typical for their precinct. We also find evidence that precinct-level cross-pressure does not drive voucher users to shade their voucher donations …

Blind Justice: Algorithms And Neutrality In The Case Of Redistricting, Douglas M. Spencer, Moon Duchin

Publications

In several areas of law and public policy, there have been longstanding dreams that computers can secure decisionmaking that takes only some things into account, while remaining demonstrably neutral to other factors. In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court will consider mandating race-neutrality in multiple domains, notably in college admissions and redistricting. In this piece, we clarify the real and imagined uses of computers in redistricting, considering their application for optimization approaches and, more recently, for representative sampling. The current pitch to the Court for a race-blind Voting Rights Act is discussed at length.

Reforming Age Cutoffs, Govind Persad

Publications

This Article examines the use of minimum age cutoffs to define eligibility for social insurance, public benefits, and other governmental programs. These cutoffs are frequently used but rarely examined in detail. In Part I, I examine and catalogue policies that employ minimum age cutoffs. These include not only Medicare and Social Security but also other policies such as access to pensions and retirement benefits, eligibility for favorable tax treatment, and eligibility for discounts on governmentally provided goods and services. In Part II, I examine different rationales underlying eligibility and discuss the imperfect fit between these rationales and the use of …

Fair Access To Scarce Medical Capacity For Non-Covid-19 Patients: A Role For Reserves, Govind Persad, Parag A. Pathak, Tayfun Sönmez, M. Utku Unver

Publications

As hospitals in the US and elsewhere fill again with patients with covid-19, discussions about how to fairly allocate scarce medical resources have come to the fore once again. One frequently voiced concern is that non-covid-19 patients with urgent health needs are facing indefinitely postponed surgeries, long-distance hospital transfers, or even are unable to access medical treatment. In our view, a reserve or categorised priority system could help. It could be used to fairly distribute scarce medical capacity—such as staffing, physical space, and medical treatments—between covid-19 and non-covid-19 patients, just as it has been used or proposed to allocate covid-19 …

Equal Protection And Scarce Therapies: The Role Of Race, Sex, And Other Protected Classifications, Govind Persad

Publications

The COVID-19 pandemic brought debates over the use of age in scarce resource allocation to the fore once again. Initially, particularly in developed countries, debates surrounded the use of older age as an exclusion or lower-priority criterion for receipt of scarce medical interventions such as ICU beds and ventilator therapy. Many advocacy groups for older adults argued that age should not be used as a criterion for access to such interventions.[1] In developed countries and in particular the United States, they were largely successful, at least with respect to formal policy, ensuring that resource allocation policies excluded or minimized the …

Essential, Not Expendable: Protecting The Economic Citizenship Of Agricultural Workers, Hunter Knapp

University of Colorado Law Review

No abstract provided.

Amicus (Fall 2021), University Of Colorado Law School

Amicus

Issue at a glance:

• Introduces the 17th dean of Colorado Law, Lolita Buckner Inniss
• Welcomes the Class of 2024 and new faculty member Doug Spencer
• Highlights the latest research by Associate Professor Kristelia García
• Features interviews with alumnae of color, as interviewed by members of the Women of Color Collective
• Recognizes attendees and sponsors of the 40th annual Alumni Awards Celebration
• Recognizes milestones and successes of Colorado Law alumni

Reducing Emissions Through Renewable Energy: Eu And U.S. Energy Policy Frameworks In The Age Of Natural Gas, Peter Mather

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Reimagining What Is Necessary: Using Active Management In Wilderness Areas To Mitigate High-Loss Wildfires, Liam Patton

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Priority Disputes Between Holders Of Old Order Mineral Rights And Holders Of Prospecting Rights Or Mining Rights Under The Mprda In South Africa: Aquila Has Landed (Continued), Pieter J. Badenhorst

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.