Digital Commons Network^™

What A Load Of Hope: The Post-Racial Mixtape, Jeremiah Chin

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This Comment analyzes how Supreme Court decisions and recent legislation have used the language of post-racialism to re-center whiteness through the law. Rather than using explicit racist language, the post-racial project exploits the language of historical antiracist efforts to negate experiences with discrimination while continuing a hostile environment for racial groups and promoting white supremacy in the United States.

Beginning with Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action, in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke and Grutter v. Bollinger, and school desegregation in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, this Comment analyzes …

Undocumented Workers And Concepts Of Fault: Are Courts Engaged In Legitimate Decisionmaking, Christine N. Cimini

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This Article examines judicial decisionmaking in labor and employment cases involving undocumented workers. Labor and employment laws, designed to protect all workers regardless of immigration status, often conflict with immigration laws designed to deter the employment of undocumented workers. In the absence of clarity as to how these differing policy priorities should interact, courts are left to resolve the conflict. While existing case law appears to lack coherence, this Article identifies a uniform judicial reliance upon “fault-based” factors. This Article offers a structure to understand this developing body of law and evaluates the legitimacy of the fault-based decisionmaking modalities utilized …

Risk Magnified: Standing Under The Statist Lens, Mary D. Fan

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Why some harms count before the courts and others do not is a matter of acute expressive and practical impact. Judicial refusal to see claimed injuries is an effective denial of legal personhood and a bar from powerful judicial machinery. The issue of “erratic, even bizarre” judicial recognition of supplicants vexed Professor Joseph Vining as early as 1978. Recent scholarship argues that injuries are seen through a subjective lens, reflecting the relative privilege of the judiciary and their concomitant difficulties in perceiving injuries to minorities and the poor. This is a troubling contention. So long as another, objective explanation remains, …

Rolling Back The Tide: Challenging The Criminalization Of Immigrants In Washington State, Angélica Cházaro

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No abstract provided.

Teaching Health Law In Rural Ethiopia: Using A Pepfar Partnership Framework And India's Shanbaug Decision To Shape A Course, Sallie Thieme Sanford [email protected]

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In April 2011, I taught a month-long intensive health law course at Haramaya University College of Law in rural eastern Ethiopia. Given the burgeoning interest in global health law, I suspect, and hope, that others are considering teaching similar courses, whether as visiting or resident faculty. This essay attempts to ease their course preparation workload. I will describe how I used two recent documents – India’s 2011 Shanbaug decision and Ethiopia’s 2010 PEPFAR Partnership Framework – to shape the course. Both of these are worth consideration for use in a variety of health law and policy courses based in low-income …

Designing Model Homes For The Changing Medical Neighborhood: A Multi-Player Pilot Offers Lessons For Aco And Pcmh Construction, Sallie Thieme Sanford [email protected]

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This Article first describes the ingrained construction incentives in our current health care system and the challenges they present. The Article then turns to key innovations to address these challenges, with a particular focus on accountable care and medical homes. Next, the Article considers the early spec houses" that provide the model for the PCMHs under development throughout the country. Then, the Article focuses on the design and finance features of Washington's ongoing pilot. Finally, the Article concludes with thoughts on a series of questions raised by this pilot and others like it. Ultimately, what medical home designs are best …

A Fresh Cut In An Old Wound–A Critical Analysis Of The Trayvon Martin Killing: The Public Outcry, The Prosecutors’ Discretion, And The Stand Your Ground Law, Tamara F. Lawson

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If the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case is to have value beyond its immediate facts, it is important to consider the case through a broad lens that encompasses law, politics, and culture and the relevant intersectionality of each. This essay gives a contextualized historical perspective with which to view the Black community’s reaction to the initial lack of criminal charges in the case. It explains why the circumstances surrounding Trayvon’s death were experienced as a fresh cut in an old, but deep, collective wound, for many Blacks. It addresses the exacerbation African Americans felt regarding law enforcement’s perceived indifference towards Trayvon, …

Trademark Apologetic Justice: China And The Three Laws, Xuan-Thao Nguyen

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The article will proceed as follows. Part I discusses the three bodies of law constituting China’s trademark jurisprudence by tracing the development of Trademark Law, Anti-Unfair Competition Law and Civil Law. All of these laws contain relevant provisions pertaining to trademark reputation and remedies, including injunction, damages and public apology to eliminate any bad effects. As China Supreme People’s Court has a significant role in shaping trademark jurisprudence and apologetic justice, Part I also analyzes judicial directives that provide guidance and instructions to the lower courts in addressing trademark reputation remedies.

An analysis of only statutes and judicial directives, however, …

Apologies As Intellectual Property Remedies: Lessons From China, Xuan-Thao Nguyen

Articles

It is a frequent refrain that “the world is shrinking.” In this same vein, the global influence of China is clearly rising. Chinese businesses are becoming more prominent in the global market, and as such, the influence and effect of Chinese law is likewise gaining in import. Chinese intellectual property law is no different.

One notable aspect of Chinese intellectual property law is the availability of apology as a remedy. Despite a culture that places a high value on apology, and considerable legal scholarship and precedent regarding apology as remedy, many in the United States scoff at the notion of …

Review Of Labor And Employment Law Decisions From The United States Supreme Court's 2010-11 Term, Eric Schnapper

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In the 2010-11 term, the U.S. Supreme Court decided nine significant labor and employment cases. Although some of these cases affected only the construction of a specific statute or constitutional provision, several of them addressed issues likely to affect the interpretation and implementation of a wide range of federal employment laws. Most of these decisions, rather than definitively resolving a question, raise a range of new issues likely to be litigated for years to come. Thus, for practitioners and academics alike, recognizing the new questions that have now been raised is at least as important as understanding what matters the …

Feeling At Home: Learning, Law, Cognitive Science, And Narrative, Lea B. Vaughn

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What is the "how and why" of law's affinity for narrative? In order to explain why the use of stories is such an effective teaching and presentation strategy in the law, this paper will consider theories and accounts from cognitive as well as evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, and, briefly, cultural anthropology. This account seeks to address "how" narrative helps us learn and use the law as well as "why" we are so compelled to use stories in teaching and in practice.

Brain science, simplified here, suggests that the first task is to grab someone's attention. Emotionally charged events are more likely …

There Is No Summer In The Courtroom, Maureen A. Howard

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Pacific Northwesterners frequently lament summer’s delayed arrival to our verdant corner of the country, and this year is no exception. June was unseasonably cool and wet, and the first official weekend of summer brought grey skies, chilly breezes, and sheets of rain. It is no surprise, then, that each year, as August approaches and summer seems to have truly arrived, locals eagerly search their closets for rarely-used warm-weather attire. Lawyers are not immune from the lure to celebrate summer’s overdue arrival by breaking out tank tops, flip-flops, sunglasses, and shorts. Nonetheless, a trial lawyer needs to remember that although summer …

Remedying The Misuse Of Nature, Sanne H. Knudsen

Articles

As currently conceived, natural resource damages are limited in scope; even in combination they cannot adequately remedy misuses of nature. Even so, these damages provide a good starting point for assessing the promise and flaws embodied in existing laws. By identifying the limits of current resource-related remedies, the changes required to better protect ecosystem health become clearer.

In search of a reformed natural resource damages law, Part I of this Article begins by exploring the idea that we should not misuse nature. It surveys current literature and explains how the idea would--if taken seriously--recast the ways we think about private …

Justice Stevens's Black Leather Arm Chair, Kathryn A. Watts

Articles

As a law clerk to Justice Stevens in the October Term 2002, I felt that the very best part of the job came almost every afternoon. Without any advance warning, the Justice would get up from his desk and walk through chambers to the law clerks’ main office and plop down into a well-worn black leather arm chair that formed part of a cozy seating area flanked by tall bookshelves filled with volumes of case reporters and the United States Code.

As soon as the Justice started settling himself into his arm chair, my co-clerks and I all knew …

Constraining Certiorari Using Administrative Law Principles, Kathryn A. Watts

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The U.S. Supreme Court—thanks to various statutes passed by Congress beginning in 1891 and culminating in 1988—currently enjoys nearly unfettered discretion to set its docket using the writ of certiorari. Over the past few decades, concerns have mounted that the Court has been taking the wrong mix of cases, hearing too few cases, and relying too heavily on law clerks in the certiorari process.

Scholars, in turn, have proposed fairly sweeping reforms, such as the creation of a certiorari division to handle certiorari petitions. This Article argues that before the Court’s discretion to set its own agenda is taken away, …

Admiralty's In Extremis Doctrine: What Can Be Learned From The Restatement (Third) Of Torts Approach?, Craig H. Allen

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The in extremis doctrine has been part of maritime collision law in the U.S. for more than one hundred and sixty years. One would expect that a century and a half would provide ample time for mariners and admiralty practitioners and judges to master the doctrine. Alas, some of the professional nautical commentary and even an occasional collision case suggest that the doctrine is often misunderstood or misapplied. A fair number of admiralty writers fail to understand that the in extremis doctrine is not a single "in extremis rule," but rather several rules, all of which are related to the …

Rebellious State Crimmigration Enforcement And The Foreign Affairs Power, Mary Fan

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The propriety of a new breed of state laws interfering in immigration enforcement is pending before the Supreme Court and the lower courts. These laws typically incorporate federal standards related to the criminalization of immigration ("crimmigration'), but diverge aggressively from federal enforcement policy. Enacting states argue that the legislation is merely a species of "cooperative federalism" that does not trespass upon the federal power over foreign affairs, foreign commerce, and nationality rules since the laws mirror federal standards. This Article challenges the formalist mirror theory assumptions behind the new laws and argues that inconsistent state crimmigration enforcement policy and resulting …

The Cape Town Convention's International Registry: Decoding The Secrets Of Success In Global Electronic Commerce, Jane K. Winn

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The International Registry, established pursuant to the Cape Town Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment, is a new global electronic commerce system for recording and establishing the relative priority of interests in aircraft equipment. Other examples of global electronic commerce systems include the airline computer reservation system, the SWIFT financial network, and payment card networks.

The International Registry may be the most successful global electronic commerce system ever built in terms of the speed with which it was implemented, its adoption rate, and the dearth of controversy surrounding its operation. The real "driver" of its success is demand for …

Too Many Tiaras: Conflicting Fiduciary Duties In The Family-Owned Business Context, Karen E. Boxx

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Family-owned businesses have been called the "backbone of the U.S. economy," but passing control of a family business to the next generation is so complex that the majority of family businesses do not survive the transition. A common scenario that leads to problems is where owners want to leave the business to their children but only one child is interested in and capable of managing the business.

A popular solution is to leave the interested child an equal share of the business, together with management control, and leave the other children's interests in the business in trust, with the manager …

A Call For Standards: An Overview Of The Current Status And Need For Guardian Standards Of Conduct And Codes Of Ethics, Karen E. Boxx, Terry W. Hammond

Articles

The role of trust in guardianships is rarely discussed, perhaps because of the assumption that court supervision of guardians reduces their power to act in any way other than trustworthy. However, as the number of persons needing guardianship protection increases while the resources available to courts to finance supervision decreases, the role of guardian is starting to become a more conventional fiduciary relationship complete with a hallmark downside-lack of supervision. Because of this trend, the concept of delineated standards for performance of a guardian's duties has taken on critical importance.

The 2001 Wingspan Conference, the second national conference on guardianship …

Patents As Promoters Of Competition: The Guild Origins Of Patent Law In The Venetian Republic, Ted Sichelman, Sean O'Connor

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Part II of this Article describes the artisan and merchant guild systems of the Venetian Republic. Part III explores the emergence of the patent system as a means for foreigners and Venetian citizens to compete with the guilds, as well as the eventual addition of negative exclusive rights to the basic license form of positive patent privileges. In so doing, contrary to the speculation of some scholars, we reject with near certainty the contention that the first patent law statute granting exclusionary rights for—in modern parlance—technological inventions was a silk-specific directive enacted by the Venetian Grand Council in the late …

Incorporating Literary Methods And Texts In The Teaching Of Tort Law, Zahr K. Said

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Literature is comparatively under-investigated as an arena for tort pedagogy and for first-year courses in the legal curriculum generally. Where literature tends to appear in law school, it most frequently does so in the form of stand-alone law-and-literature classes, which usually focus heavily on literature.

In teaching a first-year tort law course at the University of Washington School of Law, I have explicitly used literature to aid and amplify legal analysis. The emphasis has been on law, rather than on literature. Nonetheless, literary texts and methods helped my students investigate how the law conceives of, and expresses, duties and losses …

Hired To Invent Vs. Works Made For Hire: Resolving The Inconsistency Among Rights Of Corporate Personhood, Authorship, And Inventorship, Sean M. O'Connor

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This Essay focuses on the interrelation of three legal doctrines that affect the allocation of ownership and attribution of products of the human mind. The first, corporate personhood, grants corporations rights of personhood similar to those of natural persons. The second, the work-made-for-hire doctrine (WMFH) under copyright law, allocates ownership and attribution for copyrightable works to the employer of the natural-person author—even where that employer is a nonnatural, legal person such as a corporation. And the third, shop rights and the hired-to-invent exception, permits courts to grant equitable licenses or assignments to employers for their employees’ inventions.

These three doctrines …

Women In The Post-Conflict Process: Reviewing The Impact Of Recent Un Actions In Achieving Gender Centrality, Dina Francesca Haynes, Naomi Cahn, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin

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The post-conflict terrain provides multiple opportunities for transformation on many different levels: protecting civilians, providing accountability for human rights violations committed during hostilities, reforming local and national laws, reintegrating soldiers, rehabilitating and providing redress for victims, establishing or re-establishing the rule of law, creating human rights institutions and new governance structures, altering cultural attitudes, improving socioeconomic conditions, and transforming gender roles and women’s status. This Article explores the effort to make gender central in the various legal and political regimes and processes in operation post-conflict, and specifically reviews SCR 1325 and its successor resolutions to assess their real contributions towards …

Financial Regulation Reform And Too Big To Fail, Brett Mcdonnell

Articles

Perhaps the leading critique of the Dodd-Frank Act is that it does too little to address the problem of too big to fail (“TBTF”) financial institutions. The critique of TBTF institutions has two main components. The economic argument focuses on a major moral hazard problem. The political argument focuses on the political clout of TBTF institutions. There are important truths in both the economic and the political argument against TBTF institutions. However, there are also important limits to the truth of both arguments. I believe the limits are more central than the truths, and that if anything Dodd-Frank has gone …

The Past, Present, And Future Of Critical Tax Theory: A Conversation, Karen B. Brown, Mary Louise Fellows, Bridget J. Crawford

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This essay endeavors to document and to preserve the story of the origins of the book Taxing America (NYU Press 1997) edited by Karen B. Brown and Mary Louise Fellows. The publication of that text was a key milestone in the development of critical tax theory as an intellectual discipline. By identifying and bringing together lawyers and scholars with an interest in the political and discriminatory aspects of tax law, Professors Brown and Fellows created one of the first working groups of critical tax theorists. In this essay, the book's two editors reflect on the book's intellectual antecedents and its …

Who Are We? Parental Influences On Self-Identities And Self-Esteem Of Second Generation Youths In Spain, Alejandro Portes, Adrienne Celaya, Erik Vickstrom, Rosa Aparicio

Articles

We review the literature on determinants of ethnic/national self-identities and self-esteem as a prelude to examining these outcomes among a large, statistically representative sample of second generation adolescents in Madrid and Barcelona. While these psycho-social outcomes are malleable, they still represent important dimensions of immigrant adaptation and can have significant consequences both for individual mobility and collective mobilizations. Current theories are largely based on data from the United States and other Anglophone countries. The availability of a new large Spanish survey allows us to test those theories in an entirely different socio-cultural context. In addition to having data on close …

What Liaisons Say About Themselves And What Faculty Say About Their Liaisons, A U.S. Survey, Julie Arendt, Megan Lotts

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Liaison librarians and faculty in chemistry, English, and psychology departments at colleges and universities in the United States were surveyed. They answered questions about services provided by the liaison and satisfaction. Liaisons’ satisfaction with their performance was associated with active liaison service, such as recent contact with the department and more time spent on liaison work. Faculty satisfaction with liaisons was associated with contact with their liaisons. We did not find associations between liaisons’ descriptions of their work and faculty satisfaction with their liaisons for the pairs of faculty and their liaisons we were able to match.

Leaving The Big Deal: Consequences And Next Steps, Jonathan Nabe, David C. Fowler

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Many libraries are facing difficult fiscal climates with serials inflation, budget cutbacks, and reductions in allocations requiring difficult collection management decisions. Libraries may find their flexibility to plan and react unduly restricted due to being contracted to one or more Big Deals, in which they are obligated to buy large, inflexible title lists from big publishers for a set price. This presentation discusses the experience of Southern Illinois University Carbondale and the University of Oregon in leaving Big Deals, provides data on impacts on interlibrary loans, community response, and collection budgets, details the steps required before and after the decision, …

Hal W. Trovillion's Role In Preserving The History Of "Bloody Williamson", Melissa A. Hubbard

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This article examines the efforts of Hal W. Trovillion, newspaper editor and private printer, to document the controversial history of his southern Illinois coal mining town in the early twentieth century. As a historical case study, it explores some of the challenges inherent in preserving original documents and cultural knowledge without institutional support, and with active interference from community members who worked to suppress information. Trovillion used his printing presses and contacts in the historical community to ensure that the turbulent events occurring in his town in the 1920s would be preserved in the archival record.