Digital Commons Network^™

“Turn On The Lights” -Sustainable Energy Investment And Regulatory Policy: Charting The Hydrokinetic Path For Pakistan, Nadia B. Ahmad

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Toward A Jurisprudence Of Free Expression In Russia: The European Court Of Human Rights, Sub-National Courts, And Intersystemic Adjudication, Robert B. Ahdieh, H. Forrest Flemming

Faculty Scholarship

Protection of free expression in Russia is headed the wrong direction, but one institution may still be able to slow its backward slide: the Russian judiciary. In particular, sub-national courts-those operating at the ground level-have the potential to shape a renewed jurisprudence of free expression in Russia. To encourage as much, the European Court ofHuman Rights (ECHR) should engage the Russian courts in a pattern of "intersystemic adjudication, "pressing them to embrace ideas about the role of courts, the law, human rights, and free expression more in line with international norms. Hopefully, this can reverse Russia's current path toward the …

The Latest Red River Rivalry: The Supreme Court's Recent Decision Regarding The Red River Compact, Luke W. Davis, Gabriel Eckstein

Faculty Scholarship

On June 13, 2013, the United States Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in a “Red River Rivalry” with much greater implications than the annual football game. In Tarrant Regional Water District v. Herrmann, the court sided entirely with Oklahoma in that state’s dispute with Texas over the allocation of Red River water. This decision will have considerable impact on Texas’ ability to meet its ever-growing water needs. Moreover, the decision could be consequential for other interstate water compacts and the states relying on the rivers and tributaries governed by those agreements.

Reverse Payments, Perverse Incentives, Murat C. Mungan

Faculty Scholarship

Issuing and enforcing prescription drug patents requires courts and legislatures to strike a delicate balance. A patent gives drug manufacturers a legal, if temporary, monopoly on sales of a drug; this encourages manufacturers to engage in costly research and development of new medicines. But not all patents issued by the Patent Office are ultimately deemed valid – generic drug manufacturers can infringe the patent, and, when sued, attack its validity in court on a variety of grounds, including obviousness. In recent years, patent holders have begun to settle these suits (which they initiated) by paying the alleged infringer. Not surprisingly, …

Systematically Thinking About Law Firm Ethics: Conference On The Ethical Infrastructure And Culture Of Law Firms, Susan Saab Fortney

Faculty Scholarship

To advance the discourse related to law firm ethics and the impact of formal controls and informal influences on lawyer conduct, we convened on April 5, 2013 the Conference on the Ethical Infrastructure and Culture of Law Firms ("Conference" or "Symposium"). The Conference, conducted under the auspices of the Hofstra Law Review and the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University's Institute for the Study of Legal Ethics, was funded in part by the Abraham J. Gross '78 Conference and Lecture Fund at the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University. Experts who have studied issues …

Without Precedent: Legal Analysis In The Age Of Non-Judicial Dispute Resolution, Mark Edwin Burge

Faculty Scholarship

For more than a century, the American system of legal education has predominantly emphasized the role of cases and judge-made law, but with the understanding that the craft of the lawmaking judge is constrained by the doctrine of stare decisis. This case-oriented approach to teaching law extends to statutes: students learn of the role of courts in interpreting and explaining statutes, making judicial construction of statutes part-and-parcel of statutory law. Thus, pervading the formative first year of law school is the assumption that the role of lawyers is principally to analyze what courts have done in the past in …

Something To [Lex Loci] Celebrationis: Federal Marriage Benefits Following United States V. Windsor, Meg Penrose

Faculty Scholarship

The critical issue the Defense of Marriage Act ("DOMA") resolves is: who decides? Who decides whether, when, and to what extent same-sex marriages created in one American state will be recognized by other state governments, and by the federal government? That structural issue is the most important issue at stake in the controversy about interstate recognition of same-sex marriage in the United States. It is a question legal proceduralists and legal structuralists--such as conflict of laws --scholars can, should, and largely do understand and appreciate. The structural matters of respect for the constitutional allocation of government, and adherence to legitimate …

Reflections On The State As Fiduciary, Andrew S. Gold

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Intellectual Property Defenses, Alex Stein, Gideon Parchomovsky

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Duke-Ing Out Pattern Or Practice After Wal-Mart: The Eeoc As Fist, Angela D. Morrison

Faculty Scholarship

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has an essential role to play in bringing pattern or practice suits, and now is the time for it to assert its role. A pattern or practice claim, also called a systemic claim, is one in which an employer has regularly and purposefully discriminated against a class of employees based on their religion, race, sex, color, or national origin, such that the discrimination is the employer's standard operating procedure. In recent years, the Supreme Court has limited private litigants' access to the courts in ways that impact the ability of plaintiff classes to assert …

Injunctive And Reverse Settlements In Competition-Blocking Litigation, Keith N. Hylton, Sungjoon Cho

Faculty Scholarship

We distinguish standard settlements, in which the status quo is preserved, and injunctive settlements, which prohibit the defendant's activity. The reverse (payment) settlement is a special type of injunctive settlement. We examine the divergence between private and social incentives to settle and policies that would minimize socially undesirable injunctive and reverse settlements (e.g., banning reverse settlements). The results are applied to competition-blocking litigation, such as patent infringement and antidumping.

Approval And Withdrawal Of New Antibiotics And Other Antiinfectives In The U.S., 1980-2009, Kevin Outterson, John H. Powers, Enrique Seoane, Rosa Rodriguez-Monguio, Aaron S. Kesselheim

Faculty Scholarship

Concerns about a dearth of antibiotic innovation have spurred calls for incentives to speed the development of new antibiotics. Our data demonstrates that many of the new molecular entity (NME) antibioticsintroduced in the last 3 decades were withdrawn from the market, at more than triple the rate of other drug classes. Adjusted for these withdrawals, the net introduction of NME antibiotics is not as troubling of a trend. The reduction in NME antibiotics was partially offset by a surge in the introduction of NME antiretrovirals for HIV/AIDS and other drug classes (such as cardiovascular drugs) posted similar declines.

These data …

Breaking Bankruptcy Priority: How Rent-Seeking Upends The Creditors' Bargain, Mark J. Roe, Fred Tung

Faculty Scholarship

Bankruptcy reallocates value in a faltering firm. The bankruptcy apparatus eliminates some claims and alters others, leaving a reduced set of claims to match the firm’s diminished capacity to pay. This restructuring is done according to statutory and agreed-to contractual priorities, so that lower-ranking claims are eliminated first and higher ranking ones are preserved to the extent possible. Bankruptcy scholarship has long conceptualized this reallocation as a hypothetical bargain among creditors: creditors agree in advance that if the firm falters, value will be reallocated according to a fixed set of predetermined rules and contracts. In any given reorganization case, creditors …

Self-Regulation Of Insider-Trading In Mutual Funds And Advisers, Tamar Frankel

Faculty Scholarship

Mutual funds are required to impose Codes of Ethics on many of their employees. Did this requirement make a difference? After all, similar Codes proliferate in many other financial and business corporations! ⁴ with fairly miserable results. In fact, the temptations facing employees and managers of many business corporations that published self-imposed Codes are relatively weaker than the temptations facing employees and managers of mutual funds. Yet as compared to mutual funds, these business companies have failed to prevent insider-trading!

I believe that regulated mutual funds are less prone to insider-trading than non-regulated funds and traders because their Codes of …

In Good Company: How Corporate Social Responsibility Can Protect Rights And Aid Efforts To End Child Sex Trafficking And Modern Slavery, Erika George, Scarlet R. Smith

Faculty Scholarship

The principal contribution of this Article is to show that, in many cases, the private sector, in cooperation with law enforcement, can initiate and implement policies that help increase the likelihood that buyers and traffickers are caught ultimately making access to child sex workers more difficult. Most commentary regarding child sex trafficking focuses on the failures of local law enforcement to find a solution. However, this Article argues that the private business sector can effectively supplement the efforts of law enforcement, nongovernmental organizations, and international human rights initiatives to protect exploited children. In Part I, this Article first introduces the …

Brief Research Report: Sociodemographic Factors Associated With Hiv Status Among African American Women In Washington, Dc, Dexter R. Voisin

Faculty Scholarship

Introduction: African American women living in Washington, DC have one of the highest Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) incidence rates in the US. However, this population has been understudied, especially as it relates to factors associated with HIV status. Methods: This cross-sectional study examined sociodemographic factors that were associated with having a negative or positive HIV status among a sample of 115 African American women between the ages of 24 and 44 years. We assessed such factors as age, education, sexual orientation, household income, sources of income, number of children, length of residency tenure in Washington, DC, and level of HIV-prevention …

Network Signatures Of Survival In Glioblastoma Multiforme, Vishal N. Patel, Giridharan Gokulrangan, Yanwen Chen, Mehmet Koyutürk, Jill Barnholtz-Sloan, Mark R. Chance

Faculty Scholarship

To determine a molecular basis for prognostic differences in glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), we employed a combinatorial network analysis framework to exhaustively search for molecular patterns in protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks. We identified a dysregulated molecular signature distinguishing short-term (survival< 225 days) from long-term (survival>635 days) survivors of GBM using whole genome expression data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). A 50-gene subnetwork signature achieved 80% prediction accuracy when tested against an independent gene expression dataset. Functional annotations for the subnetwork signature included "protein kinase cascade," "IκB kinase/NFκB cascade," and "regulation of programmed cell death" - all of which were not significant in signatures of …

Rwanda — Cutting-Edge Vat Compliance, Richard Thompson Ainsworth, Goran Todorov

Faculty Scholarship

On August 26, 2013 the Ministerial Order on Modalities of Use of Certified Electronic Billing Machine, No. 002/23/10TC of 31/07/2013, was published in the Official Gazette of Rwanda. This Order has set loose a technology revolution in VAT compliance that promises business efficiencies, and revenue enhancements that are only imagined in more developed countries. To open the door to technology Rwanda has taken the traditional digital invoice security model, and connected it to a central security portal at the Rwanda Revenue Authority (RRA). Rwanda will now be able to securely monitor transactions in close to real-time (oversight is on-demand).

Transient And Selective Suppression Of Neural Activity With Infrared Light, Michael W. Jenkins, Hui Lu, Jeffrey M. Mcmanus, Hillel J. Chiel

Faculty Scholarship

Analysis and control of neural circuitry requires the ability to selectively activate or inhibit neurons. Previous work showed that infrared laser light selectively excited neural activity in endogenous unmyelinated and myelinated axons. However, inhibition of neuronal firing with infrared light was only observed in limited cases, is not well understood and was not precisely controlled. Using an experimentally tractable unmyelinated preparation for detailed investigation and a myelinated preparation for validation, we report that it is possible to selectively and transiently inhibit electrically- initiated axonal activation, as well as to both block or enhance the propagation of action potentials of specific …

Andromeda Dwarfs In Light Of Mond. Ii. Testing Prior Predictions, Stacy S. Mcgaugh

Faculty Scholarship

We employ recently published measurements of the velocity dispersions in the newly discovered dwarf satellite galaxies of Andromeda to test our previously published predictions of this quantity. The data are in good agreement with our specific predictions for each dwarf made a priori with modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND), with reasonable stellar mass-to-light ratios, and no dark matter, while Newtonian dynamics point to quite large mass discrepancies in these systems. MOND distinguishes between regimes where the internal field of the dwarf, or the external field of the host, dominates. The data appear to recognize this distinction, which is a unique feature …

Guantanamo Military Commissions: Reflections From A Legal Observer (Part I, Ii & Iii), Dawinder S. Sidhu

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Terrorism Risk Insurance Act: Time To End The Corporate Welfare, Robert J. Rhee

Faculty Scholarship

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, inflicted enormous losses on the insurance industry and businesses. In the wake of the disruptions occurring in the insurance market at the time, the government enacted the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002 to create a “temporary” federal backstop against catastrophic losses. This program subsidized private risk with public funds through a cost-sharing program for which the government does not receive any compensation. The compelling need for the program was unclear even in the smoldering aftermath of 9/11. Yet in response to effective lobbying by the insurance industry and business interests, Congress has …

Legal Education For All (Or More Than Just Lawyers), Carol A. Parker

Faculty Scholarship

While the need to acquire a working understanding of our laws and regulations seems only to grow, access to legal information is still largely kept at a premium by legal educators, who provide it almost exclusively through the juris doctor degree.

Only a small percentage of American law schools offer master's-level legal-studies degrees, which are typically equivalent to taking two semesters' worth of law-school courses. These non-J.D. graduate degrees are aimed at students seeking knowledge about law, but combining such programs with subject matter drawn from other disciplines to create discrete programs remains rare.

Legal Education For All (Or More Than Just Lawyers), Carol A. Parker

Faculty Scholarship

Virtually every sector of today's economy would benefit from employing workers with more than superficial knowledge of the law. Fields potentially ripe for the concept include health-care policy, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, public affairs, banking, and environmental sciences, to name just a few. An interdisciplinary approach would provide graduates of these new programs with greater access to the job markets of interdisciplinary partners—something that traditional joint degrees based on combining the J.D. program with master's degrees from other disciplines rarely do.

China's Market Economy Status Under Wto Antidumping Law After 2016, Weijia Rao

Faculty Scholarship

Paragraph 15(d) of China’s Accession Protocol provides that the provisions of subparagraph 15(a)(ii) shall expire in 2016. Subparagraph 15(a)(ii) permits the importing Member to derogate from a strict comparison with Chinese prices or costs when determining the normal value of the products if the producers under investigation cannot clearly show that Market Economy conditions prevail in the industry in question. While a respected commentator argues that, despite the stipulated expiration, the importing Member can still treat China as a Non-Market Economy and use alternative methodologies based on the remaining provisions in the chapeau, this paper takes a different view by …

Millennium Development Goals And The Protection Of Displaced And Refugee Women And Girls, Susan M. Akram

Faculty Scholarship

The international protection regime of refugee, stateless and displaced women and girls has significant deficiencies. As refugees and displaced persons, women and girls experience unique challenges. They suffer abuse disproportionately as women through rape, human trafficking, and female genital mutilation. Women and girl refugees face greater challenges and risks to safety at every stage of displacement: in refugee camps, in urban spaces, in transit to safe haven, and in the process of obtaining legal status. They are frequently at the mercy of male family members in making claims to refugee and asylum status, as females are often unable to obtain …

Punitive Military Strikes On Syria Risk An Inhumane Intervention, Jennifer Moore

Faculty Scholarship

The 1949 Geneva Conventions do not justify US missile strikes in Syria in response to chemical weapons attacks on the civilian population.

Constructing Constitutional Politics: The Reconstruction Strategy For Protecting Rights, Mark A. Graber

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Legal History Seminar: Leading Maryland Cases, Edward C. Papenfuse, Garrett Power

Faculty Scholarship

For the past decade, we have collaborated in presenting "Legal History Seminar: Leading Maryland Cases" at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. In recent years, the seminar has paid particular attention to legal cases and controversies arising in Baltimore, Maryland - a city rich with historic tumult and beset with urban problems. The 2010 offering considered the city's environmental controversies; the 2011 offering addressed the administration of justice in Baltimore during the Civil War; and the 2012 offering looked at Baltimore in the War of 1812.

While the focus of the seminar has changed from year …

Gauging The Gender Divide In The Middle East’S Educational System: Causes, Concerns, And The Impetus For Change, Nadia B. Ahmad

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.