Digital Commons Network^™

Promoting Public Protection Through An “Attorney Integrity” System: Lessons From The Australian Experience With Proactive Regulation Of Lawyers, Susan Saab Fortney

Faculty Scholarship

This essay uses the Australian proactive approach to regulating attorneys as a springboard to discussing the role of proactive regulation of lawyers in advancing public protection. The essay provides information on the genesis and implementation of “proactive management-based regulation, the system in Australia. The essay reviews key research findings from empirical studies on the impact of the new system on complaints registered against lawyers and the conduct of lawyers in firms. The essay suggests possibilities for using management-based principles to improve lawyer regulation and conduct in the United States and other jurisdictions. The author concludes with a challenge for regulators …

Confronting Totalitarianism At Home: The Roots Of European Privacy Protections, Hannah Bloch-Wehba

Faculty Scholarship

In the last several years, a consensus has developed that a wide gulf exists between European and American privacy law, although division still exists on whether European law is “more protective” or simply “home to different intuitive sensibilities” than American law. Existing research on the development of European privacy law has focused on two areas: nineteenth-century traditions of honor and dueling, which gave rise to a concept of privacy linked to dignity, and the totalitarian dictatorships of the twentieth century, in reaction to which privacy protected liberty. This Article offers a contrasting view by showing that European privacy law in …

On Bargaining For Development, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Faculty Scholarship

In his recent article, Bargaining for Development Post-Koontz, Professor Sean Nolon concludes that the Supreme Court’s recent ill-defined expansion of the circumstances in which land use permit conditions might give rise to takings liability in Koontz v. St. John’s River Water Management District will chill the state’s willingness to communicate with permit applicants about mitigation measures. He sets out five courses that government entities might take in this confusing and chilling post-Koontz world, each of which leaves something to be desired from the perspective of both developers and the public more generally.

This responsive essay proceeds in two parts. First, …

The Strategic And Discursive Contributions Of The Max Planck Principles For Intellectual Property Provisions In Bilateral And Regional Agreements, Peter K. Yu

Faculty Scholarship

In June 2013, the Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property and Competition Law released its Principles for Intellectual Property Provisions in Bilateral and Regional Agreements. Drafted by the Institute’s directors and research fellows in collaboration with a team of outside experts, this document seeks to facilitate the development of "international rules and procedures that can achieve a better, mutually advantageous and balanced regulation of international [intellectual property]."

This essay discusses the important contributions the Principles have made at both the strategic and discursive levels. It situates these two sets of contributions in the context of the ongoing challenges confronting the …

Unusual Unanimity And The Ongoing Debate On The Meaning Of Words: The Labor And Employment Decisions From The Supreme Court's 2013-14 Term, Michael Z. Green

Faculty Scholarship

During its 2013-14 term, the Supreme Court focused on labor relations, wage and hour law, whistleblowing, and employee benefits in several cases. The Court also addressed constitutional issues concerning the First Amendment, the Recess Appointments Clause, and affirmative action. The Court did not decide any employment discrimination cases during the term. Even without employment discrimination cases, the 2013-2014 term provided ten key cases of importance to labor and employment lawyers. Three of these cases involved distinctly different matters of concern for organized labor. Two cases addressed employee whistleblowing matters. Three cases focused on employee benefits. Two cases addressed issues tangentially-related …

The Blinding Color Of Race: Elections And Democracy In The Post-Shelby County Era, Sahar F. Aziz

Faculty Scholarship

Decades after passage of the historic Voting Rights Act, so much has changed. And yet, so much remains the same.

Racial minorities are registering to vote and turning out at the ballot box in record numbers. However, they remain under-represented in local elected positions and virtually excluded from national and state political office. Latinos, for example, are the largest racial minority in the U.S. at approximately 17% of the population, but only 3.3% of elected offices are held by Latinos. In states that until recently were covered by the Voting Rights Act (VRA), such as Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, …

Coercing Assimilation: The Case Of Muslim Women Of Color, Sahar F. Aziz

Faculty Scholarship

Today, I have been asked to address the domestic context of civil rights issues facing Muslim women in the United States. Admittedly, examining the experiences of Muslim American women is a risky endeavor because they are such a diverse group of women ethnically, racially, socio-economically, and religiously in terms of their levels of religiosity. Hence, I acknowledge the risk of essentializing, despite my best efforts to recognize the individual agency of each Muslim woman.

This lecture is based on a larger project that examines the myriad ways Muslim women are adversely affected by their intersectional identities, and how it impacts …

Intellectual Property, Asian Philosophy And The Yin-Yang School, Peter K. Yu

Faculty Scholarship

As an introduction to a special issue on intellectual property philosophy, this article focuses on insights from Asian thought. Such a focus is needed not only to provide balance within this special issue, which includes articles focusing primarily on Western philosophy, but also to highlight the compatibility between Asian philosophy and the notion of intellectual property rights. More importantly, this article aims to demonstrate that Asian philosophy may suggest new ways to address the ongoing and highly complex intellectual property challenges confronting emerging economies and the digital environment.

This article begins by providing a brief discussion of the many different …

The Unconstitutional Use Of Restraints In Removal Proceedings, Fatma E. Marouf

Faculty Scholarship

Although ICE's shackling practices vary across the country, in at least some jurisdictions ICE has exercised its authority under the 1988 Memorandum to indiscriminately shackle all detainees. The exact extent of this practice is unknown, but recent litigation suggests that it is not uncommon. In fact, such litigation indicates that ICE has indiscriminately shackled detainees even in courtrooms located outside of detention facilities, such as the San Francisco Immigration Court. Consequently, detained noncitizens frequently appear in immigration court looking like criminals, wearing orange jumpsuits, handcuffs, leg irons, and belly chains, even though there has been no individualized determination that they …

All Over The Map: The Diversity Of Western Water Plans, Vanessa Casado-Pérez, Bruce E. Cain, Iris Hui, Coral Abbott, Kaley Dodson, Shane Lebow

Faculty Scholarship

Water presents a complex challenge to western state governments. Water is scarcer in the West than in the East and western states face challenges unknown to eastern ones. The textual analysis of their state water planning summaries produced by the US Army Corps of Engineers between late 2008 and 2009 confirms the differences in their policy priorities. However, there is also a wide variance among western states’ policies as the diversity in their water plans show.

Water planning is a challenge not only because of the variability of the resource but also because water basins do not map our local, …

Justifying India's Patent Position To The United States International Trade Commission And Office Of The United States Trade Representative, Srividhya Ragavan, Sean Flynn, Brook Baker

Faculty Scholarship

The paper below largely is an extract of the testimonial filed by the authors to the Secretary of the ITC in response to the Notice on the Federal Register dated August 29, 2013 titled Trade, Investment, and Industrial Policies in India: Effects on the U.S. Economy. Where required, the paper also draws from the written submissions that the authors made to the United States Trade Representative’s (hereinafter, USTR) office on the related question of whether India deny adequate and effective protection of intellectual property rights or deny fair and equitable market access to U.S. persons who rely on intellectual property …

A Free Start: Community-Based Organizations As An Antidote To The Mass Incarceration Of Women Pretrial, Amber Baylor

Faculty Scholarship

In 1973, the feminist newsmagazine Off Our Backs featured a segment on women in jail awaiting trial in Washington, D.C. Many of the women faced minor charges, such as soliciting prostitution, but remained in detention because they could not afford to pay even very low amounts of monetary bail. The magazine interviewed Myrna Raeder, then a fellow at Georgetown, and other attorneys involved in a class action suit against D.C. corrections, who argued that low-income women were unjustly subjected to the punitive effects of pretrial detention, in violation of their due process rights. Raeder reported to the newsmagazine, “as a …

Changing Punishments For Property Offenses, To Change The Lives Of Women In Need, Amber Baylor

Faculty Scholarship

This year the Supreme Court denied certiorari to Cecelia Cathleen Rodriguez, a 61- year old woman from Oklahoma sentenced to life in prison. Her crime was theft of two purses from a department store. Ms. Rodriguez hoped that the Supreme Court would see fit to upend her conviction or declare her sentence excessive. Ms. Rodriguez's family reported to the state court that she has struggled with heroin addiction since the 1960s, leading to numerous arrests on petty charges. The majority of her extensive record was composed of petty thefts, drug possession, and other nonviolent offenses. The stolen bags in this, …

High Court Pretense, Lower Court Candor: Judicial Impartiality After Capterton V. Massey Coal Co., Lynne H. Rambo

Faculty Scholarship

Apolitical, impartial judging has always been our judicial ideal. In the last twenty years, however, special interest groups have sought power over (and through) judges by pouring millions into judicial elections, and the Court has recognized their first amendment right to do so. In the midst of this politicization of judicial elections, the Court five years ago reinforced the impartiality ideal, holding very broadly in Caperton v. Massey Coal Co. that it violates due process for a judge to sit whenever there is a “probability of bias,” i.e., whenever the average judge is unlikely to be neutral. Caperton involved a …

Ftc V. Actavis: The Patent-Antitrust Intersection Revisited, Glynn S. Lunney Jr

Faculty Scholarship

In FTC v. Actavis, the Supreme Court determined that courts should apply a rule of reason analysis to determine whether using a reverse payment settlement to resolve pharmaceutical patent litigation violates the antitrust laws. Essentially unique to pharmaceutical-patent litigation, a reverse payment settlement involves a payment from the patent-holder to generic challengers in return for the generics dropping their challenge to the patent(s) at issue and agreeing to remain out of the market. Such a settlement agreement enables the patent-holder to maintain exclusivity in the relevant market and to keep prices of the associated pharmaceutical higher than they would …

Correcting A False Step: Rethinking Overhead For The "Actual Expenses" Affirmative Defense To The Texas Construction Trust Fund Act, Wayne R. Barnes

Faculty Scholarship

In a typical construction project, an owner contracts with a general contractor to construct improvements or make repairs to real property. The owner agrees to pay a total contract price for the work. Often, the general contractor then contracts with subcontractors, laborers, materialmen, and other suppliers to do aspects of the job. These are part of the contractor’s costs to do the work for owner, and the expectation is that the contractor will pay his subcontractors and laborers from the money received from the owner. All too frequently, unfortunately, contractors receive the payment from the owner and then do not …

Taming The Tigers: Domestic Violence, Legal Professionalism, And Well-Being, Jill C. Engle

Faculty Scholarship

Domestic violence kills thousands of American women every year. In 2013, one of them was my client. My law school clinic represented a woman divorcing her abusive husband after twenty years of marriage. Three days after we served him with the divorce complaint, he walked into the grocery store where she worked and shot her dead. He then turned the gun on himself, and died from self-inflicted gunshot wounds. The lead student working her case listened in horror as one of our local colleagues who had heard the breaking news described it to her in a phone call to the …

The History Of Prosecutorial Discretion In Immigration Law, Shoba S. Wadhia

Faculty Scholarship

This Article describes the historical role of prosecutorial discretion in immigration law and connects this history to select executive actions announced by President Obama on November 20, 2014.

A Rapid Reaction To O'Bannon: The Need For Analytics In Applying The Sherman Act To Overly Restrictive Joint Venture Schemes, Stephen F. Ross, Wayne Desarbo

Faculty Scholarship

This Article reviews the recent and highly publicized district court decision holding that NCAA rules, which bar student-athletes from any compensation for image rights, violated the Sherman Act, and that big-time athletic programs could lawfully agree among themselves to limit compensation to $5,000 annually in trust for each athlete upon leaving school. This Article briefly discusses why the decision correctly found the current rule to be illegal, but also details why, under settled antitrust law, the critical question of how much compensation would significantly harm consumer appeal for college football and basketball is a question better left to marketing science …

Mandatory Reporting Of Campus Sexual Assault And Domestic Violence: Moving To A Victim-Centric Protocol That Comports With Federal Law, Jill C. Engle

Faculty Scholarship

This Article will examine "mandatory reporting" of campus domestic violence and sexual assault' by faculty members when a student discloses this kind of incident to them. This Article describes the legal and social landscape of mandatory reporting and the attendant challenges, along with the policies and practices that colleges should adopt for faculty reporting to comply with federal law while still remaining sensitive to victim needs.

Rosemond, Mens Rea, And The Elements Of Complicity, Kit Kinports

Faculty Scholarship

The confluence of two widely invoked federal statutes – one governing accomplice liability, the other imposing a sentencing enhancement when firearms are involved in a violent or drug-trafficking crime – reached the Supreme Court this past Term in Rosemond v. United States. The Court’s analysis of the mens rea issues raised in that case starkly illustrates the confusion characterizing this area of complicity law, which has attracted surprisingly little attention from courts, legislators, or scholars. The lack of clarity is particularly acute for crimes like the weapons offense in Rosemond that can plausibly be interpreted to include a circumstance element. …

Elusive Equality: Reflections On Justice Field’S Opinions In Chae Chan Ping And Fong Yue Ting, Victor C. Romero

Faculty Scholarship

For immigration scholars, Justice Field is perhaps best remembered for his majority opinion in Chae Chan Ping v. United States, the Supreme Court’s decision upholding Chinese exclusion, and credited for introducing the plenary power doctrine to immigration law. Yet, despite the opinion’s xenophobic rhetoric reflecting his personal views of the Chinese, Justice Field dissented in Fong Yue Ting v. United States, reasoning that, once they became lawful residents, the Chinese were entitled to be treated as equals under the law regardless of citizenship, a position supported by his earlier federal circuit court opinion in Ho Ah Kow v. …

The Role Of The Profit Imperative In Risk Management, Christopher French

Faculty Scholarship

Risks in the world abound. Every day there is a chance that each of us could be in a car accident. Or, one of us could be the victim of a tornado, flood or earthquake. Every day someone becomes deathly ill from an insidious disease. Our properties are in constant peril—one’s house could catch fire at any time or a tree could fall on it during a storm. Any one of these events could have devastating financial consequences, and they are just a few of the many risks that impact our daily lives. One of the principal ways we manage …

Cell Phones, Brain Cancer, And Scientific Outliers In Murray V. Motorola, David H. Kaye

Faculty Scholarship

Pending before the District of Columbia's highest court in a case asking whether cell phones can cause cancer is whether to replace the jurisdiction's venerable Frye standard for reviewing the admissibility of scientific evidence with the approach adopted by the U.S. Supreme Court in Daubert v. Merrell Dow. The author analyzes one aspect of the two evidentiary standards that leads him to question the trial judge's suggestion in Murray v. Motorola that adopting the Daubert perspective would allow greater leeway in excluding the plaintiff's evidence.

Sentencing Rules And Standards: How We Decide Criminal Punishment, Jacob Schuman

Faculty Scholarship

Over the course of the past 300 years, American sentencing policy has alternated between “determinate” and “indeterminate” systems of deciding punishment. Debates over sentence determinacy have so far focused on three main questions: Who should decide punishment? What makes punishment fair? And why should we punish wrongdoers at all?

In this Article, I ask a new, fourth, question: How should we decide punishment? I show that determinate sentencing uses rules to determine sentences, while indeterminate sentencing relies on standards. Applying this insight to federal sentencing practice, I demonstrate that district court judges “depart” or “vary” from the United States Sentencing …

A Strategic Legal Challenge To The Unforeseen Anticompetitive And Racially Discriminatory Effects Of Baseball’S North American Draft, Stephen F. Ross, Michael James Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

Major League Baseball (MLB) has honored a single player by retiring his number for every club. Absent special commemorations, no player will wear the number “42” in honor of the man who broke the color barrier to become the first African American to play major league baseball in the modern era: Jackie Robinson. MLB has also honored a single player—chosen from nominees from each individual club—by presenting an annual award for humanitarian service in his name; that honoree is Roberto Clemente. However, the sad reality is that if a fifteen-year-old Jackie Robinson were growing up today in South Pasadena, California, …

Trust And Social Commerce, Julia Y. Lee

Faculty Scholarship

Internet commerce has transformed the marketing of goods and services. The separation between point of sale and seller, and the presence of geographically dispersed sellers who do not engage in repeated transactions with the same customers challenge traditional mechanisms for building the trust required for commercial exchanges. In this changing environment, legal rules and institutions play a diminished role in building trust. Instead, new systems and methods are emerging to foster trust in one-shot commercial transactions in cyberspace.

The Article focuses on the rise of “social commerce,” a socio-economic phenomenon centered on the use of social media and other modes …

Expired Patents, Saurabh Vishnubhakat

Faculty Scholarship

This article presents a comprehensive empirical description of the public domain of technologies that have recently passed out of patent protection. From a new dataset of over 300,000 patents that expired during 2008–2012, the study examines technological, geographical, and procedural traits of newly public inventions as a basis for exploring the social value associated with their competitive use. Moreover, comparing these inventions to inventions newly patented during the same period enables more specific discussion of how the balance of innovation in the United States continues to change.

Regulating Pot To Save The Polar Bear: Energy And Climate Impacts Of The Marijuana Industry, Gina S. Warren

Faculty Scholarship

It goes by many names: cannabis, marijuana, pot, chronic, grass, reefer, shwag, Mary Jane. Whatever the name, the trend is clear: the weed is legal but the herb ain’t green. Nearly half of all U.S. states have enacted—or have pending— legislation to legalize, decriminalize, or in some way permit the use and cultivation of marijuana. As a result, marijuana has become a significant topic of conversation in the U.S.— especially in the areas of social policy and criminal law. One conversation yet to reach fruition, however, is the industry’s projected impacts on energy demand and the climate. As the industry …

Anti-Herding Regulation, Ian Ayres, Joshua Mitts

Faculty Scholarship

In some contexts, an individual’s choice to mimic the behavior of others, to join the herd, can increase systemic risk and retard the production of information. Herding can thus produce negative externalities. And in such situations, individuals by definition have insufficient incentives to separate from the herd. But the traditional regulatory response to externality problems is to impose across-the-board mandates. Command-and-control regulation tends to displace one pooling equilibrium by moving behavior to a new, mandated pool. Mortgage regulators, for example, might respond to an unregulated equilibrium where most homeowners start with 2% down by imposing a requirement that causes most …