Digital Commons Network^™

Impoverished Ip, Stephanie Plamondon

Faculty Scholarship

Intellectual Property (IP) scholarship is generally concerned with how innovation policy impacts social welfare by providing appropriate incentives for innovation. But lately, the question of who participates in IP creation — with an eye to distributive justice as well as social welfare more broadly — has been getting more attention. Most scholars writing in this vein acknowledge IP’s shortcomings in achieving proportionate participation and representation across socioeconomic, race, and gender lines. But many argue that in spite of these flaws, IP regimes can advance distributive justice by giving the poor and other members of disadvantaged groups opportunities to accumulate wealth …

Big Brother, Othello, And Dogs That Don't Bark: The Use Of Literary Allusion In Federal Appellate Opinions, Kristin B. Gerdy

Faculty Scholarship

Unlike a fish, in the words of Justice Elena Kagan, a literary5 allusion is not “a discrete thing that possesses physical form”6 distinguishable from other expressive devices. Instead, literary allusions can take many forms, be used for many purposes, and have various effects on the reading audience. If the most basic form of a fish is the common goldfish in a bowl, then the most basic judicial literary allusion is a reference to a well-known story in a judicial opinion that is used to make a comparison in a reader’s mind. But just as there are many types of fish …

World Peace And Gender Equality: Addressing Un Security Council Resolution 1325’S Weaknesses, Eric Talbot Jensen, Elizabeth Griffiths, Sara Jarman

Faculty Scholarship

The year 2020 marks the twentieth anniversary of the passage of United Nations Security Council Resolution (“UNSCR”) 1325, the most important moment in the United Nations’ efforts to achieve world peace through gender equality. Over the past several decades, the international community has strengthened its focus on gender, including the relationship between gender and international peace and security. National governments and the United Nations have taken historic steps to elevate the role of women in governance and peacebuilding. The passage of UNSCR 1325 in 2000 foreshadowed what many hoped would be a transformational shift in international law and politics.

However, …

Liquid Gold, Katrice Bridges Copeland

Faculty Scholarship

According to federal health and census data, addiction treatment was a $21 billion business in 2003. By 2020, it is expected to double to $42 billion. The opioid crisis has fueled the growth of the industry by increasing the demand for residential drug treatment programs. Astronomical growth of an industry, however, often invites bad actors.

Bad actors have swarmed the residential drug treatment industry. One category of bad actors includes patient brokers, who recruit drug addicts with health insurance to residential drug treatment centers for sizeable kickbacks. Another category of bad actors are the owners and operators of treatment centers …

Capitalizing On Healthy Lawyers: The Business Case For Law Firms To Promote And Prioritize Lawyer Well-Being, Jarrod F. Reich

Faculty Scholarship

This Article is the first to make the business case for firms to promote and prioritize lawyer well-being. For more than three decades, quantitative research has demonstrated that lawyers suffer from depression, anxiety, and addiction far in excess of the general population. Since that time, there have been many calls within and outside the profession for changes to be made to promote, prioritize, and improve lawyer well-being, particularly because many aspects of the current law school and law firm models exacerbate mental health and addiction issues, as well as overall law student and lawyer distress. These calls for change, made …

Ranking For Good?: A Comparative Assessment Of The Performance Of French Corporations In Human Rights Rankings, Erika George, David Restrepo Amariles

Faculty Scholarship

This article proceeds as follows. First, it will define well-being and discuss the ways in which a range of human rights must be protected to promote well-being. Next, it will explain the ways businesses can impact well-being, for good or for ill. This will be followed by a discussion on the relevant legal and policy frameworks in France that regulate information relevant to the social and environmental impacts of business, including the Duty of Vigilance Law and the National Action Plan of France for Implementing the U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Using examples of leading French multinational …

The Internet As A Speech Machine And Other Myths Confounding Section 230 Reform, Danielle K. Citron, Mary Anne Franks

Faculty Scholarship

A robust public debate is currently underway about the responsibility of online platforms. We have long called for this discussion, but only recently has it been seriously taken up by legislators and the public. The debate begins with a basic question: should platforms should be responsible for user-generated content? If so, under what circumstances? What exactly would such responsibility look like? Under consideration is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act—a provision originally designed to encourage tech companies to clean up “offensive” online content. The public discourse around Section 230, however, is riddled with misconceptions. As an initial matter, many …

The Automated Administrative State: A Crisis Of Legitimacy, Danielle K. Citron, Ryan Calo

Faculty Scholarship

The legitimacy of the administrative state is premised on our faith in agency expertise. Despite their extra-constitutional structure, administrative agencies have been on firm footing for a long time in reverence to their critical role in governing a complex, evolving society. They are delegated enormous power because they respond expertly and nimbly to evolving conditions.

In recent decades, state and federal agencies have embraced a novel mode of operation: automation. Agencies rely more and more on software and algorithms in carrying out their delegated responsibilities. The automated administrative state, however, is demonstrably riddled with concerns. Legal challenges regarding the denial …

Evidence Of Memory From Brain Data, Emily R. Murphy, Jesse Rissman

Faculty Scholarship

Much courtroom evidence relies on assessing witness memory. Recent advances in brain imaging analysis techniques offer new information about the nature of autobiographical memory and introduce the potential for brain-based memory detection. In particular, the use of powerful machine- learning algorithms reveals the limits of technological capacities to detect true memories and contributes to existing psychological understanding that all memory is potentially flawed. This article first provides the conceptual foundation for brain-based memory detection as evidence. It then com- prehensively reviews the state of the art in brain-based memory detection research before establishing a framework for admissibility of brain-based memory …

Moral Character: Making Sense Of The Experiences Of Bar Applicants With Criminal Records, Hadar Aviram

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Bankruptcy Hardball, Jared A. Ellias, Robert J. Stark

Faculty Scholarship

On the eve of the financial crisis, a series of Delaware court decisions resulted in a radical change in law: creditors would no longer have the kind of common law protections from opportunism that helped protect their bargains for the better part of two centuries. In this Article, we argue that Delaware’s shift materially altered the way large firms approach financial distress, which is now characterized by a level of chaos and rent-seeking unchecked by norms that formerly restrained managerial opportunism. We refer to the new status quo as “bankruptcy hardball.” It is now routine for distressed firms to engage …

Providing Adolescents With Independent And Confidential Access To Childhood Vaccines: A Proposal To Lower The Age Of Consent, Lois A. Weithorn, Dorit R. Reiss

Faculty Scholarship

The recent rise in rates of nonvaccination and vaccine-preventable diseases and the attendant risks to the public’s health require that lawmakers consider new policy solutions. This Article proposes one such solution. We recommend creation of a limited exception to parental decisionmaking authority by permitting certain older minors to provide legally binding consent for childhood vaccinations and protecting the confidentiality of minors who request vaccination. We analogize this proposed policy to other statutory exceptions that permit certain minors independent access to services relating to contraception, pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, mental health and substance abuse, and sexual assault. In this interdisciplinary paper, …

On Trust, Law, And Expecting The Worst, Elizabeth F. Emens

Faculty Scholarship

This Review has three parts. Part I aims to convey something of the breadth and interest of Hasday’s fascinating new book, foregrounding the role of gender and beginning to touch the subject of trust. Part II delves briefly but widely into the theme of trust, which pervades the book and invites further examination. Part III presents a framework that combines affective trust and epistemic curiosity and applies this framework to illuminate and sort Hasday’s proposals for reform; to critique a recent, dramatic change in the evidentiary treatment of marital confidences; and to devise a novel approach to prenuptial agreements. Throughout, …

Fair Use Factor Four Revisited: Valuing The "Value Of The Copyrighted Work", Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

Recent caselaw has restored the prominence of the fourth statutory factor – “the effect of the use upon the market for or value of the copyrighted work” – in the fair use analysis. The revitalization of the inquiry should also occasion renewed reflection on its meaning. As digital media bring to the fore new or previously under-examined kinds of harm, courts not only need to continue refining their appreciation of a work’s markets. They must also expand their analyses beyond the traditional inquiry into whether the challenged use substitutes for an actual or potential market for the work. Courts should …

Child Welfare And Covid-19: An Unexpected Opportunity For Systemic Change, Jane M. Spinak

Faculty Scholarship

The COVID-19 pandemic has already wrecked greater havoc in poor neighborhoods of color, where pre-existing conditions exacerbate the disease’s spread. Crowded housing and homelessness, less access to health care and insurance, and underlying health conditions are all factors that worsen the chances of remaining healthy.Workers desperate for income continue to work without sufficient protective measures, moving in and out of these neighborhoods, putting themselves and their families at risk. During periods of greater disruption, tensions are heightened and violence more prevalent. Already some experts are warning of an onslaught of child maltreatment cases, citing earlier examples of spikes in foster …

Long-Term Bias, Eric L. Talley, Michal Barzuza

Faculty Scholarship

An emerging consensus in certain legal, business, and scholarly communities maintains that corporate managers are pressured unduly into chasing short-term gains at the expense of superior long-term prospects. The forces inducing managerial myopia are easy to spot, typically embodied by activist hedge funds and Wall Street gadflies with outsized appetites for next quarter’s earnings. Warnings about the dangers of “short termism” have become so well established, in fact, that they are now driving changes to mainstream practice, as courts, regulators and practitioners fashion legal and transactional constraints designed to insulate firms and managers from the influence of investor short-termism. This …

Patently Risky: Framing, Innovation And Entrepreneurial Preferences, Elizabeth Hoffman, David L. Schwartz, Matthew L. Spitzer, Eric L. Talley

Faculty Scholarship

An emerging common wisdom holds that courts have made it “too hard” to obtain patent protection in critical industries. The origin of this criticism dates back at least as far as the United States Supreme Court’s 2012 landmark opinion in Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc. which (the argument goes) triggered a chain reaction of judicial opinions rendering patent rights progressively more difficult to secure. Two years later, the Supreme Court decided Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank, another opinion widely viewed as restricting patent rights. And, barely three years after Mayo, the Federal Circuit cited it in …

Short And Distort, Joshua Mitts

Faculty Scholarship

Pseudonymous attacks on public companies are followed by stock price declines and sharp reversals. These patterns are likely driven by manipulative stock options trading by pseudonymous authors. Among 1,720 pseudonymous attacks on mid- and large-cap firms from 2010 to 2017, I identify over $20.1 billion in mispricing. Reputation theory suggests these reversals persist because pseudonymity allows manipulators to switch identities without accountability.

What Do Lawyers Contribute To Law & Economics?, Robert E. Scott, George G. Triantis

Faculty Scholarship

The law-and-economics movement has transformed the analysis of private law in the United States and, increasingly, around the world. As the field developed from 1970 to the early 2000s, scholars have developed countless insights about the operation and effects of law and legal institutions. Throughout this period, the discipline of law-and-economics has benefited from a partnership among trained economists and academic lawyers. Yet the tools that are used derive primarily from economics and not law. A logical question thus demands attention: what role do academic lawyers play in law-and-economics scholarship? In this Essay, we offer an interpretive theory of the …

Harassment, Workplace Culture, And The Power And Limits Of Law, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

This article asks why it remains so difficult for employers to prevent and respond effectively to harassment, especially sexual harassment, and identifies promising points for legal intervention. It is sobering to consider social-science evidence of the myriad barriers to reporting sexual harassment – from the individual-level and interpersonal to those rooted in society at large. Most of these are out of reach for an employer but workplace culture stands out as a significant arena where employers have influence on whether harassment and other discriminatory behaviors are likely to thrive. Yet employers typically make choices in this area with attention to …

Conceptualizing Legal Childhood In The Twenty-First Century, Clare Huntington, Elizabeth S. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

The law governing children is complex, sometimes appearing almost incoherent. The relatively simple framework established in the Progressive Era, in which parents had primary authority over children, subject to limited state oversight, has broken down over the past few decades. Lawmakers started granting children some adult rights and privileges, raising questions about their traditional status as vulnerable, dependent, and legally incompetent beings. As children emerged as legal persons, children’s rights advocates challenged the rationale for parental authority, contending that robust parental rights often harm children. And a wave of punitive reforms in response to juvenile crime in the 1990s undermined …

Exemplary Legal Writing 2019: Four Recommendations, Jed S. Rakoff, Lev Menand

Faculty Scholarship

Part of the purpose of recommending exemplary law books of the past year to readers of the Green Bag is to bring to their focus books even such erudite readers may not have noticed that nonetheless deserve their attention.

Building A Law-And-Political-Economy Framework: Beyond The Twentieth-Century Synthesis, Jedediah S. Purdy, David Singh Grewal, Amy Kapczynski, K. Sabeel Rahman

Faculty Scholarship

We live in a time of interrelated crises. Economic inequality and precarity, and crises of democracy, climate change, and more raise significant challenges for legal scholarship and thought. “Neoliberal” premises undergird many fields of law and have helped authorize policies and practices that reaffirm the inequities of the current era. In particular, market efficiency, neutrality, and formal equality have rendered key kinds of power invisible, and generated a skepticism of democratic politics. The result of these presumptions is what we call the “Twentieth-Century Synthesis”: a pervasive view of law that encases “the market” from claims of justice and conceals it …

In Defense Of Empiricism In Family Law, Elizabeth S. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

It is fitting to include an essay defending the application of empirical research to family law and policy in a symposium honoring the scholarly career of Peg Brinig, who is probably the leading empiricist working in family law. While such a defense might seem unnecessary, given the expanding role of behavioral, social, and biological research in shaping the regulation of children and families, prominent scholars recently have raised concerns about the trend toward reliance on empirical science in this field. A part of the criticism is directed at the quality of the science itself and at the lack of sophistication …

Picking The Low-Hanging Fruit: A Short Essay For Michael Klausner, Ronald J. Gilson

Faculty Scholarship

The articles that comprise this issue of the Journal of Corporation Law were first presented at a conference held at the Wharton School and co-sponsored by Wharton together with Columbia and Stanford Law Schools. The event was organized by my friend Peter Conti-Brown, to whom I am grateful for both the thought and the effort. Standing alone, the thought that the conference was warranted would have been extremely generous. However, anyone who has organized a conference knows that the idea for such events can be exciting, but what follows is an amount of work that had it been anticipated would …

Boynton V. Virginia And The Anxieties Of The Modern African-American Customer, Amber Baylor

Faculty Scholarship

In 1958, Bruce Boynton was arrested for ordering food in a Whites-Only diner and charged with criminal trespass. Sixty years later, African Americans continue to face arrest and threat of arrest in commercial establishments based on discriminatory trespass claims. When store owners or employees decide to exclude would-be patrons from their establishment for discriminatory reasons, both overt and implicit, they rely on the police to enforce this form of discrimination. This article considers the legacy of Boynton v. Virginia, particularly the resonance of Boynton’s unaddressed claim, that the state enforcement of discriminatory trespass allegations is an Equal Protection …

Decarcerating New York City: Lessons From A Pandemic, Nicole Smith Futrell

Faculty Scholarship

Over the last decade, long before the sweeping impact of COVID-19, the criminal legal system in New York City has been on a halting path toward decarceration. Set against the national backdrop of declining crime rates and a reckoning with the economic, social, and racial costs of mass criminalization and incarceration, elected officials in New York City and State have acknowledged that a shift toward reducing the number of people held in New York City jails is long overdue. Particular attention has been focused on Rikers Island, the notoriously violent, sprawling jail complex, which has been regarded as one of …

Contre-/Counter-, Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

Examines the “counter-” move in Balibar’s thought, analysing it not in the Kantian or Hegelian sense of a synthesis that resolves an antinomic opposition (not the least of which, because the particle “contre-” functions differently than the particle “anti-”), but rather as an original counterpoint that itself becomes so powerful as to liberate itself from the oppositional relationship and transform itself into a free-standing concept, intervention, or even mode of governmentality. It is not an opposition that leads to a synthesis, but instead to a stage of “perfection” that (1) merely indexes its former counter-partner, and (2) becomes a fully …

The Proportionality Rule And Mental Health Harm In War, Sarah Knuckey, Alex Moorehead, Audrey Mccalley, Adam Brown

Faculty Scholarship

The foundational international humanitarian law rule of proportionality — that parties to an armed conflict may not attack where civilian harm would be excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage — is normally interpreted to encompass civilian physical injuries only. Attacks may cause significant mental harms also, yet current interpretations of the law lag behind science in understanding and recognizing these kinds of harms. This article analyzes legal, public health, psychology, and neuroscience research to assess the extent to which mental health harms should and could be taken into account in proportionality assessments.

The New Restatement Of Children And The Law: Legal Childhood In The Twenty-First Century, Clare Huntington, Elizabeth S. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay is based on a previous article: Clare Huntington & Elizabeth Scott, Conceptualizing Legal Childhood in the Twenty-First Century, 118 Mich. L. Rev. 1371 (2020) (offering a comprehensive account of the Child Wellbeing framework).

Since the 1960s, the law regulating children has become increasingly complex and uncertain. The relatively simple framework established in the Progressive Era, in which parents had primary authority over children subject to a limited supervisory and protective role of the state, has broken down. Lawmakers have begun to grant children some adult rights and privileges, raising questions about their traditional status as vulnerable, dependent, …