Digital Commons Network^™

Corporate Taxation And Industrial Policy, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

The Trump administration recently announced two new ventures into industrial policy. First, it will impose a levy on chip exports to China by Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). Under the agreement, Nvidia and AMD will pay the government 15 percent of their gross revenue from sales to China. The secretary of the Treasury has said the administration will consider expanding this type of deal to other industries. Second, the administration announced that it will take a 9.9 percent equity stake in Intel

Innovation Interrupted: Legal And Institutional Risks Of Undermining Public-Private Partnerships, Jennifer S. Fan, Xuan-Thao Nguyen

Articles

Part I traces the development of the Bayh–Dole Act and discusses public–private partnership collaboration. Part II focuses on intellectual property generation by universities, illustrating the benefits of public– private partnership. Then Part III highlights the Trump administration’s federal funding cuts to universities that jeopardize the established public–private partnerships. Finally, Part IV details the consequences of how federal funding cuts impact the venture capital sector and the legal architecture of innovation, eroding the United States’ standing in the innovation race.

Instilling Primary-Source Research Confidence In Undergraduate History Majors: Insight Into Instructional Impact And Student Preferences, Matthew J. Gorzalski

Articles

Information literacy and critical thinking are arguably the most important and transferable skills undergraduate history majors develop in the course of their studies. A primary-source-based research paper is often an undergraduate history major’s capstone assignment toward graduation. Yet they often face these assignments having little or no prior experience with archival research and lack confidence in finding and using primary sources. This article reports on a study conducted during the 2022 and 2023 spring semesters at Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIUC) involving archival literacy instruction for undergraduate history majors enrolled in HIST 392 Historical Research and Writing. It examined the …

Burdens Of Proof In Criminal Procedure, Eve Brensike Primus

Articles

The Supreme Court’s haphazard approach to allocating burdens of proof in criminal procedure has created a system in which constitutional rights can be rendered meaningless simply because defendants are required to prove things they cannot possibly know. Even though allocations of the burden of proof often drive litigation outcomes, the Court has failed to establish clear burden allocation structures for cases arising under the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments, leaving lower courts split about how to allocate the burdens. When the Supreme Court does allocate burdens, it often does so without explanation or consideration of key factors. Recent Supreme …

Antitrust’S Consumer Tradeoffs, Samuel N. Weinstein

Articles

In modern antitrust law, courts are required to ask only one question: did the challenged action harm consumers? This Article asks a different question: which consumers? Over the last few decades, the Supreme Court has increasingly required antitrust plaintiffs to prove not only that they were harmed, but also that their harm outweighed any other consumers’ gains. The doctrine forces courts to pit groups of consumers against each other. In Amex, it was merchants against credit card holders. In Brooke Group, it was consumers buying a product during predation against consumers buying it during recoupment. In cases involving aftermarkets for …

Safe Sex In The Age Of Big Tech Feminism, Brenda Dvoskin, Thomas E. Kadri

Articles

Lawmakers and technology companies are regulating online sexuality in the name of feminism. Whereas libertarian ideals dominated early debates about internet governance, "safety" has become the rallying cry to regulate online activity in the age of Big Tech. Legislators across the political spectrum and companies around the world are devising interventions meant to keep people - and especially women safe from the risks of online sexuality. Through law and technology, they target everything from privacy invasions to unwanted messages to sexual deepfakes. We call this regulatory and ideological trend Big Tech feminism.

This Article interrogates the feminist strands animating Big …

Defining The Field Of Law And Macroeconomics: A Framework From International Monetary Law, Nikita Aggarwal, Adam Feibelman

Articles

This Article proposes an analytical framework for defining the contours of the emerging field of law and macroeconomics drawing on the International Monetary Fund's principle of "macro-criticality." Such a framework can help steer scholarly debate toward a clearer understanding of the relationship between law and the economy and inform policymaking within that domain. In its native context, the macro-criticality principle limits the IMF's jurisdiction to policy areas that are critical for member countries' domestic and external stability. The IMF's approach distinguishes between a core set of macrocritical policies and other non-core policies that are contextually macrocritical. Over time, the IMF …

Should Tax-Free Triangular Mergers Be Eliminated?, Reuven Avi-Yonah

Articles

The tax advantages of reverse triangular mergers under section 368(a)(2)(E) are well known. They enable the acquiring corporation (P) to use up to 60 percent cash consideration to acquire the stock of target (T) through a merger with a controlled subsidiary (S), with T surviving. This amount of boot is higher than what is allowed under a B or C reorganization. Because it is a triangular merger, it avoids exposing the assets of P to the liabilities of T (unlike a direct merger), and because it is equivalent to a stock acquisition, it avoids having to transfer assets, which is …

An Exploration Of The Evolving Boundary-Spanning Leadership Role Of Architects, Rory Concannon, Roisin Murphy, Oluwasegun Seriki

Articles

Architects form part of multidisciplinary teams in the construction of the built environment. Traditionally they have played a leading role within the construction process, often managing entire projects to completion. In recent years the composition of construction teams have evolved, leading to a perception that the architects leadership role has been diminished. Little is known about the boundary-spanning leadership required by architects, particularly in the light of the evolving roles. Through in-depth, semi-structured interviews, this research reduces this gap by exploring architect’s leadership practices in the context of changing boundaries within the construction team. Our findings reveal six specific competencies …

Reforming The Indian Bar: The Limits Of Technological Solutions, Varsha Aithala, Karthik Suresh

Articles

A majority of Indians do not have effective access to legal services, despite the constitutional promise of access to justice. There are two intertwined reasons for this: the unavailability of a sufficient number of good quality lawyers, and the high costs of accessing legal services. The Indian legal profession is highly unequal, with ‘prestige’ being the currency of upward professional mobility. The professional regulator, the Bar Council of India, simply lacks the capacity to regulate quality. As a consequence, clients lack the information to access lawyers, and to understand the outcomes they desire from them, and the fees they have …

Statelessness As An Academic Concern: The Indian Supreme Court’S Engagement With Citizenship Policy In In Re: Section 6a Of The Citizenship Act, 1955, Aishwarya Birla

Articles

In October 2024, the Supreme Court of India (‘Court’) made a significant ruling regarding citizenship laws in Assam, a state in the north-east of the country. The case In Re: Section 6Aof the Citizenship Act, 1955(‘In Re: s 6A’)centred on s 6A of the Citizenship Act, 1955(‘Citizenship Act’), which pertains to granting citizenship to a specific class of migrants who entered Assam before ‘the 1stday of January, 1966’.The Supreme Court upheld the constitutional validity of s 6A in a 4:1 majority. In doing so, the Court also engaged with a multitude of important issues for constitutional law and citizenship in …

Artificial Ignorance: Understanding The Role Of Ai In Modern Agnotology, Amit Ray, Michael Nolan

Articles

This paper explores the concept of agnotology, the deliberate production of ignorance, within the context of modern scientific endeavors, particularly in the corporate and technological sectors. It examines how industries use various tactics to manipulate public understanding of scientific issues, often to protect profits and limit liability. The rise of private sector funding and the increasing reliance on technologies like AI and machine learning have exacerbated this process by making scientific inquiry more opaque and less accountable. Ultimately, we argue that as knowledge production becomes more entangled with corporate interests and technological systems, traditional methods of oversight and regulation are …

The Bandages Problem, James E. Marengo, Joseph G. Voelkel, David L. Farnsworth

Articles

A new probability problem, named the Bandages Problem, is described and solved. The problem involves repeatedly selecting and removing an item at random from a finite population that initially consists of a known configuration of single and paired items. For each selection, the probability that the chosen item is single is found. Generalizations are suggested.

Constitutional Futurism As Pedagogy, Jeremiah Chin

Articles

Constitutional Law has transformed from a course on history to a discussion of current events. Cases like Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo reveal that the study of constitutional law is not a static, or even linear, discussion of constitutional text and history. Law is a shifting, changing enterprise that reflects social constructions of power, authority, and identity. How do we teach, learn, and understand constitutional law that is so laden with history, riddled with theories of consistency and adherence to precedent, but ultimately subject …

Pierce County Juvenile Justice Assessment, Alya Azman, Kathryn Cunningham, Anna Duncan, David M. N. Garavito, Noah Gubner, Jean Hernandez, Robyn Metcalfe, Rachel Porter, Santiago Pedraza Arenas, Meli Sameh, Sarah Cusworth Walker

Articles

Following a 2024 County Council request, the Pierce County Performance Audit Committee contracted with the CoLab for Community and Behavioral Health Policy at the University of Washington to conduct an audit of the county’s juvenile justice system against national and research best practice. The assessment is intended to guide future county investments in preventing and responding to youth crime, particularly youth violence, and to inform current policy discussions around the need to invest significant county funds into a renovation or reenvisioning of the current Juvenile Justice Court and Detention Center (Remann Hall).

Labor, Leisure, And Law, Aneil Kovvali, Jonathan S. Masur

Articles

Americans work harder than their counterparts in many other advanced economies. While many predicted that technological progress would eventually make work obsolete, Americans continue to pull long hours. Although stories of worker burnout and “quiet quitting” suggest that this situation is not a good fit for everyone, any problems are largely invisible to the conceptual frameworks that dominate the analysis of law. These frameworks normally assume the goal of maximizing production and often treat the human preference for leisure as a problem to be solved. This Article analyzes the problem of overwork. In doing so, it surfaces legal and policy …

Constitutional Futurisms, Jeremiah Chin

Articles

How do we reckon with the past? The Supreme Court’s recent embrace of originalism as a mode of constitutional analysis relies almost exclusively on a view of history and tradition that would bind us to an understanding of principles and ideals that legitimized the exclusion of minority voices. Cases such as New York State Pistol and Rifle Ass'n v. Bruen use flavors of originalism as a framework to define rights and governmental powers through their historical antecedents, but this broad standard of interpretation is notably absent in the Court’s recent discussions of histories and traditions of racism in the United …

Deepfakes Deconstructed, Jacob Noti-Victor

Articles

With the rapid advancement of photorealistic generative Al technology, the problem of sexually explicit deepfakes has grown more urgent than ever. Thanks to widely available Al systems, users can now easily create images that appear to depict real people engaging in sexual acts. Not only have Taylor Swift and other celebrities been targeted, but deepfakes are also now alarmingly prevalent in American schools.

Comparing Conventional And Alternative Mechanisms Of Discovering And Accessing The Scientific Literature, William H. Walters

Articles

This study compares the bibliographic and full-text coverage of 15 conventional and alternative discovery/access mechanisms: two multidisciplinary library databases (Scopus and the Web of Science Core Collection), five single-subject databases, the integrated library search (ILS) mechanism of Manhattan University, a scholarly search engine (Google Scholar), two web-based scholarly databases (Dimensions and OpenAlex), two academic social networks (Academia.edu and ResearchGate), and two pirate sites (Anna’s Archive and Sci-Hub). The analysis is based on known-item searches for 875 target documents in chemistry, materials science, cardiology, public health, economics, education, and psychology. Overall, Google Scholar, OpenAlex, and the ILS are the most comprehensive …

When Money Isn't Money: The Second Circuit's Gutting Of The Discharge-For-Value Defense For Erroneous Payments, Jeanne L. Schroeder

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Expungement Process: Survey Evidence On Applicant Experiences, Mira Edmonds, J.J. Prescott, Sonja Starr, German Marquez Alcala

Articles

Tens of millions of Americans with publicly accessible criminal convictions face significant collateral consequences that affect their employment, housing, and family life, which not only harm these individuals but also limit society’s access to their skills, productivity, and participation. In response, policymakers have enlarged the scope and enhanced the accessibility of criminal-record expungement laws. Little is known, however, about how individuals perceive, navigate, and take advantage of these new, broader laws. This Article presents findings from a large-scale survey of 1,439 expungement applicants and recipients in Detroit, conducted in partnership with Project Clean Slate (PCS), a city initiative assisting residents …

Property Values: Accounting For Racial Valorization And Stigmatization In Development, Audrey G. Mcfarlane

Articles

No abstract provided.

Expanding Equity And Innovation In Pharmaceutical Law And Drug Development: Paying Clinical Trial Participants For Their Data, Steve Calandrillo, Bernadette Tosti, Jefferson Smith, Jamison Koeman

Articles

Bringing a drug to market is exceedingly expensive and exposes pharmaceutical manufacturers to significant legal risk. But when companies are successful, their profits make the PowerBall jackpot look like petty cash. Staggering rewards measure in the billions or millions for the firms, CEOs, pharmacies, drug benefit managers, data brokers, and many more actors in the pharmaceutical-to-patient pipeline. The only individuals who don’t get paid handsomely are the clinical trial participants, whose voluntary participation and data helped make those successes possible. It is long past time that we reform the legal and regulatory roadblocks to paying clinical trial participants in the …

Preface To Volume 16, Issue 2, Peter A. Carfagna

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Safe Harbor For Leveraged Buyouts In Bankruptcy, David G. Carlson

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Improvement Regime: Public Trusts, Real Estates, And India’S Urban Futurities, Anwesha Ghosh

Articles

Over the last two decades, since scholarly writing on India witnessed an “urban turn,” numerous historians have analyzed the role of the improvement trust in the redevelopment of Indian cities in the twentieth century, most specifically those of Bombay, Calcutta, and Delhi. This paper revisits and reassesses some of their key arguments to suggest that rather than studying the “failures” of the individual trusts to foster sanitary built environments, we should pay attention to the contingent workings of the city trusts that were constitutively designed for such failures. Using a comparative analysis of the Bombay and Calcutta improvement trusts, this …

The Supreme Court’S Old Habits In A New Era? Native Nations, Statehood, And An Indigenous-Led Future For Natural Resources, Monte Mills

Articles

art I of this essay looks back and, relying on Winans and Winters, illustrates the Court’s longstanding commitment to a recognition of tribally reserved rights while requiring a collaborative approach that acknowledges some state interest and authority. Part II then briefly assesses the modern era of Indigenous leadership in natural resources, reviewing the ways in which Native Nations are implementing a new framework of collaborative stewardship for lands, waters, wildlife, and other ecological systems. Finally, Part III considers how the lessons or impacts of this broader movement might be relevant in future conflicts raising questions of statehood and tribal …

Democratic Lawyering: Upending The "Hidden Curriculum" To Prepare New Lawyers For A New World, Eduardo R.C. Capulong, Andrew King-Ries, Monte Mills

Articles

Multiple heightening crises reveal the deficiencies and contradictions of legal education, in particular the values it imparts. Perpetuating myths about U.S. democracy and rule of law, the enduring formalist, liberal legalist cast of law school is increasingly at odds with students’ lived experiences. As liberal democracy and the rule of law falter, no longer is relying on the “hidden curriculum” or the historically nebulous and mythical narratives of the law and our legal system sufficient to prepare tomorrow’s lawyers for the challenges faced by our profession. Instead, with a boost from ABA Standard 303, this article draws on the tradition …

Heritage In Search Of A Home: Archiving The Learning Designs And Artistry Of Instructional Television Of The 1970s And 1980s, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

This chapter tells intertwined stories of the rescue and preservation of two archival collections of instructional (classroom) television programs and attendant materials from the ITV new wave of the 1970s and 1980s. A.I.T., the Agency for Instructional Television/Technology created innovative programming combining instructional design and media artistry, all focused on learners. The ability, afforded by these collections, to address key lacunae in the history could have significant implications for the design of learning media in its current forms of interactive media and video games for learning as well as the development of the next evolution of learning media and technology.

Fixed Points In Linear Regression, David L. Farnsworth

Articles

There is a set of points in the plane whose elements correspond to the observations that are used to generate a simple least-squares regression line. Each value of the independent variable in the observations matches up with one of these points, which are called pivot or fixed points. The coordinates of the fixed points are derived, and the properties of the points are explored. All points in the plane that yield each of the fixed points are found. The role that fixed points play in regression diagnostics is investigated. A new mechanical device that uses linkages to model the role …