Digital Commons Network^™

Are Ballot Titles Biased: Partisanship In California's Supervision Of Direct Democracy, Christopher S. Elmendorf, Douglas M. Spencer

Publications

This study investigates whether and if so under what conditions the California attorney general (AG), who authors the ballot title and summary (label) for statewide ballot initiatives, writes ballot language that is biased rather than impartial. State law demands an impartial label, but commentators frequently complain that the AG chooses misleading language to bolster (undermine) measures that the AG or the AG's party supports (opposes). In this Article, using a convenience sample of students from several universities, we measure ordinary observers' perceptions of bias in ballot labels for initiatives dating back to 1974. Separately, we calculate an objective measure of …

What Marriage Law Can Learn From Citizenship Law (And Vice Versa), Govind Persad

Publications

Citizenship and marriage are legal statuses that generate numerous privileges and responsibilities. Legal doctrine and argument have analogized these statuses in passing: consider, for example, Ted Olson’s statement in the Hollingsworth v. Perry oral argument that denying the label “marriage” to gay unions “is like you were to say you can vote, you can travel, but you may not be a citizen.” However, the parallel between citizenship and marriage has rarely been investigated in depth. This paper investigates the marriage-citizenship parallel with a particular focus on three questions prompted by recent developments in law and policy: 1) Should we provide …

Benefit Corporations: A Challenge In Corporate Governance, Mark J. Loewenstein

Publications

Benefit corporations are a new form of business entity that is rapidly being adopted around the country. Though the legislation varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, most statutes are based on a model proposed and promoted by B Lab, itself a nonprofit corporation. The essence of these statutes is that, in making business judgments, the directors of a benefit corporation must consider the impact of their decisions on the environment and society. The model legislation, though, may create serious governance issues for the directors of benefit corporations that operate under these laws. This article analyzes the model legislation and identifies its …

Crowdfunding Securities, Andrew A. Schwartz

Publications

A new federal statute authorizes the online "crowdfunding" of securities, a new idea based on the concept of "reward" crowdfunding practiced on Kickstarter and other websites. This method of selling securities had previously been banned by federal securities law but the new CROWDFUND Act overturns that prohibition.

This Article introduces the CROWDFUND Act and explains that it can be expected to have two primary effects on securities law and capital markets. First, it will liberate startup companies to use peer networks and the Internet to obtain modest amounts of capital at low cost. Second, it will help democratize the market …

The Human Rights Of Indigenous Peoples: United Nations Developments, S. James Anaya

Publications

No abstract provided.

Technological Cost As Law In Intellectual Property, Harry Surden

Publications

Changes in the scope of IP legal rights are generally thought to be linked to changes in positive law. This Article argues that shifts in the scope of IP laws are often driven by changes in technological feasibility and not by changes in positive law. Diminishing technological constraint is an under-acknowledged factor driving changes in substantive IP law.

More specifically, there are certain activities that are core to IP law. Such activities include, for example, the copying of creative works in copyright (e.g. duplicating books or music), or the manufacturing of products in patent law. Traditionally, IP legal theory has …

The Exit Myth: Family Law, Gender Roles, And Changing Attitudes Toward Female Victims Of Domestic Violence, Carolyn B. Ramsey

Publications

This Article presents a hypothesis suggesting how and why the criminal justice response to domestic violence changed, over the course of the twentieth century, from sympathy for abused women and a surprising degree of state intervention in intimate relationships to the apathy and discrimination that the battered women' movement exposed. The riddle of declining public sympathy for female victims of intimate-partner violence can only be solved by looking beyond the criminal law to the social and legal changes that created the Exit Myth.

While the situation that gave rise to the battered women's movement in the 1970s is often presumed …

The Case For Curation: The Relevance Of Digest And Citator Results In Westlaw And Lexis, Susan Nevelow Mart

Publications

Humans and machines are both involved in the creation of legal research resources. For legal information retrieval systems, the human-curated finding aid is being overtaken by the computer algorithm. But human-curated finding aids still exist. One of them is the West Key Number system. The Key Number system’s headnote classification of case law, started back in the nineteenth century, was and is the creation of humans. The retrospective headnote classification of the cases in Lexis’s case databases, started in 1999, was created primarily - although not exclusively - with computer algorithms. So how do these two very different systems deal …

Bad Briefs, Bad Law, Bad Markets: Documenting The Poor Quality Of Plaintiffs' Briefs, Its Impact On The Law, And The Market Failure It Reflects, Scott A. Moss

Publications

For a major field, employment discrimination suffers surprisingly low-quality plaintiffs' lawyering. This Article details a study of several hundred summary judgment briefs, finding as follows: (1) the vast majority of plaintiffs' briefs omit available caselaw rebutting key defense arguments, many falling far below basic professional standards with incoherent writing or no meaningful research; (2) low-quality briefs lose at over double the rate of good briefs; and (3) bad briefs skew caselaw evolution, because even controlling for win-loss rate, bad plaintiffs' briefs far more often yield decisions crediting debatable defenses. These findings are puzzling. In a major legal service market, how …

Tribal Rights, Human Rights, Kristen A. Carpenter, Angela R. Riley

Publications

No abstract provided.

Foreword: Public Constitutional Literacy; A Conversation, Melissa Hart

Publications

No abstract provided.

Book Review, Peter H. Huang

Publications

This review of Leo Katz's book, Why the Law is So Perverse, addresses three questions. First, does Katz draw the appropriate normative conclusions about legal perversities based on their connections to social choice theory? In other words, what are the legal ethics and professionalism implications of his book? Second, how does each of the legal perversities in the book follow from a particular social choice theory result? In other words, what is the precise theoretical connection between each of the legal perversities discussed and an impossibility theorem in social choice theory? Third, can we reinterpret our understanding of the …

Drafting Model Laws On Indoor Pollution For Developing And Developed Nations Workshop, July 12-13, 2012, Boulder, Colorado: Introduction, Lakshman Guruswamy

Publications

No abstract provided.

Development And Dissemination Of Clean Cookstoves: A Model Law For Developing Countries, Lakshman Guruswamy

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No abstract provided.

Contract As Pattern Language, Erik F. Gerding

Publications

Christopher Alexander’s architectural theory of a "pattern language" influenced the development of object-oriented computer programming. This pattern language framework also explains the design of legal contracts. Moreover, the pattern language rubric explains how legal agreements interlock to create complex transactions and how transactions interconnect to create markets. This pattern language framework helps account for evidence, including from the global financial crisis, of failures in modern contract design.

A pattern represents an encapsulated conceptual solution to a recurring design problem. Patterns save architects and designers from having to reinvent the wheel; they can use solutions that evolved over time to address …

Reimagining Democratic Inclusion: Asian Americans And The Voting Rights Act, Ming Hsu Chen, Taeku Lee

Publications

The current legal framework for protecting voting rights in the United States has been dramatically destabilized by Supreme Court decisions re-interpreting the protections against minority vote dilution and requires rethinking to survive modern challenges. At the same time, the nation has itself undergone dramatic changes in the racial composition of its polity and in the complexity and salience of race as a factor in political life. In this paper, we focus on a relatively unexamined constituent of this complex reality of modern racial diversity that illustrates some of the core features that all minority groups face in continuing VRA challenges: …

(In)Competence In Appellate And District Court Brief Writing On Rule 12 And 56 Motions, Scott A. Moss

Publications

No abstract provided.

Leniency As A Miscarriage Of Race And Gender Justice, Aya Gruber

Publications

No abstract provided.

Professionalism And The New Normal, Philip J. Weiser

Publications

No abstract provided.

American Gangsters: Rico, Criminal Syndicates, And Conspiracy Law As Market Control, Benjamin Levin

Publications

In an effort to reexamine legal and political decisions about criminalization and the role of the criminal law in shaping American markets and social institutions, this Article explores the ways in which criminal conspiracy laws in the United States have historically been used to subdue nonstate actors and informal markets that threatened the hegemony of the state and formal market. To this end, the Article focuses primarily on the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) as illustrative of broader trends in twentieth-century criminal policy. Enacted in 1970, RICO provides criminal sanctions for individuals engaged in unacceptable organized activities and …

Front Matter, Journal On Telecommunications & High Technology Law

Colorado Technology Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents, Journal On Telecommunications & High Technology Law

Colorado Technology Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Terrorizing Wikileaks: Why The Embargo Against Wikileaks Will Fail, Samuel C. Cannon

Colorado Technology Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Internet Multistakeholder Processes And Technopolicy Standards, Nick Doty, Deirdre K. Mulligan

Colorado Technology Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Legality Of State Protectionist Laws Against Legal Process Outsourcing, Anne J. Lee

Colorado Technology Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Large Immortal Machine And The Ticking Time Bomb, Susan Landau

Colorado Technology Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Why Growing Up Is Hard To Do: Institutional Challenges For Internet Governance In The "Quarterlife Crisis" Of The Digital Revolution, Mark Cooper

Colorado Technology Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Business Of Startup Law: Alternative Fee Arrangements And Agency Costs In Entrepreneurial Law, Sarah Boulden

Colorado Technology Law Journal

No abstract provided.

A Website Owner's Practical Guide To The Wayback Machine, Holly Andersen

Colorado Technology Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Has The Digital Revolution Led To Cultural Devolution?, Jonathan Taplin

Colorado Technology Law Journal

No abstract provided.