Digital Commons Network^™

Saving Face: Unfolding The Screen Of Chinese Privacy Law, Tiffany Li, Jill Bronfman, Zhou Zhou

Faculty Scholarship

Privacy is often a subjective value, taking on meaning from specific social, historical, and cultural contexts. Western privacy scholars have so far generally limited academic study to focus on Western ideals of privacy. However, privacy – or some notion of it – can be found in almost every culture and every nation, including the growing economic powerhouse that is the People’s Republic of China. Focusing on China as a case study of non-Western privacy norms is important today, given the rapid rise of the Chinese economy and its corresponding impact on worldwide cultural norms and law. Simply put, it is …

The New Health Care Federalism On The Ground, Abbe R. Gluck, Nicole Huberfeld

Faculty Scholarship

This essay, part of a symposium investigating methods of empirically evaluating health policy, focuses on American health care federalism, the relationship between the federal and state governments in the realm of health care policy and regulation. We describe the results of a five year study of the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) from 2012-2017. Our study focused on two key pillars of the ACA, which happen to be its most state-centered — expansion of Medicaid and the implementation of health insurance exchanges — and sheds light on federalism in the modern era of nationally-enacted health …

Twenty Years Of Web Scraping And The Computer Fraud And Abuse Act, Andrew Sellars

Faculty Scholarship

"Web scraping" is a ubiquitous technique for extracting data from the World Wide Web, done through a computer script that will send tailored queries to websites to retrieve specific pieces of content. The technique has proliferated under the ever-expanding shadow of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), which, among other things, prohibits obtaining information from a computer by accessing the computer without authorization or exceeding one's authorized access.

Unsurprisingly, many litigants have now turned to the CFAA in attempt to police against unwanted web scraping. Yet despite the rise in both web scraping and lawsuits about web scraping, practical …

What Explains Observed Reluctance To Trade? A Comprehensive Literature Review, Kathryn Zeiler

Faculty Scholarship

Valuation gaps and exchange asymmetries are among the most widely studied phenomena in the field of behavioral economics. The purpose of this chapter is to present the current state of the social science literature related to observed reluctance to trade. Numerous theories have been proposed and only a few might be safe to rule out based on the evidence to date. The chapter begins by describing the standard model of preferences, which generally assumes that valuation is independent of ownership status, and then catalogs early findings that seem to suggest that ownership status influences valuation. Early research tested various potential …

Representative/Senator Trump?, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

The American presidency is a much more powerful office in 2017 than was contemplated by the Constitution of 1788. In large measure, that is because Congress has unconstitutionally subdelegated many of its legislative powers to the President. The President thus effectively functions as the Congress to a significant degree, which not only perverts the constitutional structure but also significantly raises the stakes of presidential elections. There is no good reason to expect Congress or the courts to stem the tide of subdelegation. Presidents, however, have a number of tools available to resist, and even reverse, that tide. While there is …

The Challenge Of The New Preemption, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

The past decade has witnessed the emergence and rapid spread of a new and aggressive form of state preemption of local government action across a wide range of subjects, including among others firearms, workplace conditions, sanctuary cities, antidiscrimination laws, and environmental and public health regulation. Particularly striking are punitive measures that do not just preempt local measures but also hit local officials or governments with criminal or civil fines, state aid cutoffs, or liability for damages, as well as broad preemption proposals that would virtually end local initiative over a wide range of subjects. The rise of the new preemption …

Climate Change And Human Trafficking After The Paris Agreement, Michael Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

At least 21 million people globally are victims of human trafficking, typically involving either sexual exploitation or forced labor. This form of modern-day slavery tends to increase after natural disasters or conflicts where large numbers of people are displaced from their homes and become highly vulnerable. In the decades to come, climate change will very likely lead to a large increase in the number of people who are displaced and thus vulnerable to trafficking. The Paris Climate Agreement of 2015 established objectives to limit global temperature increases, but the voluntary pledges made by nearly every country fall far short of …

Is The First Amendment Obsolete?, Tim Wu

Faculty Scholarship

The First Amendment was brought to life in a period, the twentieth century, when the political speech environment was markedly different than today’s. With respect to any given issue, speech was scarce and limited to a few newspapers, pamphlets or magazines. The law was embedded, therefore, with the presumption that the greatest threat to free speech was direct punishment of speakers by government.

Today, in the internet and social media age, it is no longer speech that is scarce – rather, it is the attention of listeners. And those who seek to control speech use new methods that rely on …

The Democratic Deficit, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

Why democracy? Institutions of government and others must meet conditions of legitimacy. Why? and what are they? what are principles of legitimacy, like the principle of subsidiarity? and how does democracy fit in a theory of legitimacy? The paper surveys what it takes to be the seven most important advantages of democratic government: civil and political rights, more extensive opportunities for people to engage in public affairs, responsiveness to the expressed preferences of the people, stability, peaceful transfer of power, loyalty and solidarity. It then considers the role of legitimation in securing these advantages. These reflection lead to the question …

The Law's Own Virtue, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

The paper offers a new account of the rule of law, revising my previous view, and criticising some alternatives. It focuses on the rule of law's aim to avoid arbitrary government, and on its relation to the essential functions of government. The rule of law requires that government action will manifest an intention to protect and advance the interests of the governed. As such it is almost a necessary condition for the law's ability to meet other moral demands, and it facilitate coordination and cooperation internally and internationally.

The “Protection Of The Competitive Process” Standard, Tim Wu

Faculty Scholarship

The antitrust law should return to a standard more realistic and suited to the legal system – the “protection of the competitive process.” It posits a basic question for law enforcement and judges. Given complained-of conduct, is that conduct actually part of the competitive process, or is it a sufficient deviation as to be unlawful? In this view, antitrust law aims to create a body of common-law rules that punish and therefore deter such disruptions – hence “protecting the competitive process.”

Preemption And Commandeering Without Congress, Jessica Bulman-Pozen

Faculty Scholarship

In a time of polarization, states may introduce salutary pluralism into an executive-dominated regime. With partisan divisions sidelining Congress, states are at once principal implementers and principal opponents of presidential policies. As polarization makes states more central to national policymaking, however, it also poses new threats to their ability to act. This Essay cautions against recent efforts to preempt state control over state officials and to require states to follow other states’ policies, using sanctuary jurisdictions and the pending federal Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act as examples.

Aggressive Policing And The Educational Performance Of Minority Youth, Joscha Legewie, Jeffrey A. Fagan

Faculty Scholarship

An increasing number of minority youth are confronted with the criminal justice system. But how does the expansion of police presence in poor urban communities affect educational outcomes? Previous research points at multiple mechanisms with opposing effects. This article presents the first causal evidence of the impact of aggressive policing on the educational performance of minority youth. Under Operation Impact, the New York Police Department (NYPD) saturated high crime areas with additional police officers with the mission to engage in aggressive, order maintenance policing. To estimate the effect, we use administrative data from about 250,000 adolescents aged 9 to 15 …

Fiscal Pressures And Discriminatory Policing: Evidence From Traffic Stops In Missouri, Allison P. Harris, Elliott Ash, Jeffrey A. Fagan

Faculty Scholarship

This paper provides evidence of racial variation in traffic enforcement responses to local government budget stress using data from policing agencies in the state of Missouri from 2001 through 2012. Like previous studies, we find that local budget stress is associated with higher citation rates; we also find an increase in traffic-stop arrest rates. However, we find that these effects are concentrated among White (rather than Black or Latino) drivers. The results are robust to the inclusion of a range of covariates and a variety of model specifications, including a regression discontinuity examining bare budget shortfalls. Considering potential mechanisms, we …

Heat Waves: Legal Adaptation To The Most Lethal Climate Disaster (So Far), Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

The worst heatwave in modern history occurred in Russia in 2010; its rare combination of extreme temperatures and long duration killed an estimated 55,000 people. Under an RCP 8.5 scenario, comparable heat waves could occur every two years in the eastern United States by the end of the century, and by then in Europe, the legendary heat wave of 2003 “would be classed as an anomalously cold summer relative to the new climate.” These increased temperatures and heat waves are not just occurring randomly. The science is clear that human activities – mostly greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation – are …

Reckoning Contract Damages: Valuation Of The Contract As An Asset, Victor P. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

When a contract is breached the law in most jurisdictions provides some version of the aphorism that the non-breaching party should be made whole. Application of the aphorism has proven problematic, particularly for anticipatory repudiations. This paper argues for a general principle that should guide application – the contract is an asset and the problem is one of valuation of the change in value of that asset at the time of the breach. This provides a framework that will help clear up some conceptual problems in damage assessment. The focus is on direct damages, not consequential damages.

The paper begins …

The Sound & Fury Of Patent Activity, Robin Feldman, Mark A. Lemley

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Institutional Design Of Punishment, Aaron J. Rappaport

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Intellectual Disability, The Death Penalty, And Jurors, David L. Faigman, Emily V. Shaw, Nicholas Scurich

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

California's Drug Transparency Law: Navigating The Boundaries Of State Authority On Drug Pricing, Jaime S. King, Katherine L. Gudiksen, Timothy T. Brown, Christopher M. Whaley

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Association Of Legal Intervention Injuries With Race And Ethnicity Among Patients Treated In Emergency Departments In California, Aaron J. Rappaport, Alyssa C. Mooney, Shannon Mcconville, Renee Y. Hsia

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Influenza Mandates And Religious Accommodation: Avoiding Legal Pitfalls, Dorit Rubinstein Reiss, Veena B. Dubal

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Trouble With Counting: Cutting Through The Rhetoric Of Red Tape Cutting, Jodi L. Short

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Dilemma Of The "Doctor In The Family", Joanna K. Weinberg

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Cooperative Subfederalism, Dave Owen

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Mourning King: The Civil Rights Movement And The Fight For Economic Justice, Reuel Schiller

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Persistência Das Desigualdades Raciais No Sistema De Justiça Criminal Dos Eua, George Bisharat

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Bankruptcy Claims Trading, Jared A. Ellias

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Metaphysics Of Arbitration: A Reply To Hensler & Khatam, Hiro Aragaki

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Asymmetric Constitutional Hardball, Joseph Fishkin, David E. Pozen

Faculty Scholarship

Many have argued that the United States' two major political parties have experienced "asymmetric polarization" in recent decades: The Republican Party has moved significantly further to the right than the Democratic Party has moved to the left. The practice of constitutional hardball, this Essay argues, has followed a similar – and causally related – trajectory. Since at least the mid-1990s, Republican officeholders have been more likely than their Democratic counterparts to push the constitutional envelope, straining unwritten norms of governance or disrupting established constitutional understandings. Both sides have done these things. But contrary to the apparent assumption of some legal …