Digital Commons Network^™

The Surprising Relevance Of Medical Malpractice Law, Michael D. Frakes

University of Chicago Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Fox In The Hedges: Vermeule's Vision Of Optimized Constitutionalism In A Suboptimal World, Jonathan Turley

University of Chicago Law Review

No abstract provided.

Conscience And Complicity: Assessing Pleas For Religious Exemptions In "Hobby Lobby's" Wake, Amy J. Sepinwall

University of Chicago Law Review

In the paradigmatic case of conscientious objection, the objector claims that his religion forbids him from actively participating in a wrong (for example, by fighting in a war). In the religious challenges to the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate, on the other hand, employers claim that their religious convictions forbid them from merely subsidizing insurance through which their employees might commit a wrong (for example, by using contraception). The understanding of com-plicity underpinning these challenges is vastly more expansive than the standard that legal doctrine or moral theory contemplates. Courts routinely reject claims of conscientious objection to taxes that fund …

The Accrual Of Wrongful Death Claims Under The Ftca, Rakesh A. Mittal

University of Chicago Law Review

No abstract provided.

Can Americans Resist Surveillance?, Ryan Calo

University of Chicago Law Review

This Essay analyzes the ability of everyday Americans to resist and alter the conditions of government surveillance. Americans appear to have several avenues of resistance or reform. We can vote for privacy-friendly politicians, challenge surveillance in court, adopt encryption or other technologies, and put market pressure on companies not to cooperate with law enforcement. In practice, however, many of these avenues are limited. Reform-minded officials lack the capacity for real oversight. Litigants lack standing to invoke the Constitution in court. Encryption is not usable and can turn citizens into targets. Citizens can extract promises from companies to push back against …

Restating Environmental Law, Tracy Hester, Robert V. Percival, Irma S. Russell, Victor Byers Flatt, Joel A. Mintz

Faculty Works

The American Law Institute's work on Restatements is a monumental legal achievement and has helped bring clarity, consistency and guidance to many fields of U.S. law. ALI has not, however, ever undertaken a major project or Restatement on U.S. environmental or natural resource law. This article describes why U.S. environmental law provides a rich area for ALI to tackle, and it answers preliminary objections that ALI is not well suited for this particular challenge or that U.S. environmental law is a poor candidate for a Restatement or a Statement of Principles.

We also describe an informal effort underway by a …

Producing Better Mileage: Advancing The Design And Usefulness Of Hybrid Vehicles For Social Business Ventures, John E. Tyler, Evan Absher, Kathleen Garman, Anthony J. Luppino

Faculty Works

Since 2008 approximately half of the states in the U.S. have enacted statutes permitting “hybrid” business forms that blend aspects of traditional for-profit ventures with characteristics normally associated with traditional non-profit entities. This article analyzes theoretical, academic, practical, legal, and regulatory questions regarding the extent to which the existing hybrids are suited to achieving social purposes objectives, including in comparison to modified traditional forms of business organization. Finding the current fleet of hybrids an innovative, useful start, but with need to evolve, this article proposes statutory language (set forth in a detailed appendix, and summarized in the article text), and …

The Standard For Breach Of Liability Insurer's Duty To Make Reasonable Settlement Decisions: Exploring The Alternatives, Jeffrey E. Thomas

Faculty Works

This Article considers the standard to be applied to determine whether an insurer has breached its duty to make reasonable settlement decisions. It focuses primarily on two standards: the disregard the limits (“DTL”) standard endorsed by section 24 of the Restatement of the Law of Liability Insurance (hereinafter “Restatement” or “Discussion Draft”), and the equal consideration (“EC”) standard, which I consider to be the primary competitor to DTL. The DTL standard says an insurer’s behavior is evaluated from the standpoint of a person who faces the full exposure of potential liability from a claim; to do this, the insurer (and …

Bogus Refunds & Bad Penalties: The Feckless And Fixable Refund Penalty System, Del C. Wright Jr.

Faculty Works

Bogus refund schemes, i.e., schemes created to generate undeserved tax refunds, have long plagued the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”). In 2011-2013, the IRS identified and stopped over $53 billion fraudulent refunds, yet paid over $10 billion in fraudulent refunds during the same period. Those bogus refunds, however, are not a new phenomenon: a 2005 report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (“TIGTA”) to Congress noted that in that year, there were approximately 70,000 bogus claims for refund, totaling over $100 million. By 2007, the Joint Committee on Taxation (the “Joint Committee”), echoing TIGTA’s concerns, told Congress that bogus …

Time For A Restatement, Tracy Hester, Robert Percival, Irma S. Russell, Victor Flatt, Joel A. Mintz

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

We Should Use 'Cause Of Action' More Carefully: A Review Of John F. Preis, How The Federal Cause Of Action Relates To Rights, Remedies, And Jurisdiction, Lumen N. Mulligan

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

On Class-Not-Race, Samuel R. Bagenstos

Book Chapters

Throughout the civil rights era, strong voices have argued that policy interventions should focus on class or socioeconomic status, not race. At times, this position-taking has seemed merely tactical, opportunistic, or in bad faith. Many who have opposed race-based civil rights interventions on this basis have not turned around to support robust efforts to reduce class-based or socioeconomic inequality. That sort of opportunism is interesting and important for understanding policy debates in civil rights, but it is not my focus here. I am more interested here in the people who clearly mean it. For example, President Lyndon Baines Johnson—who can …

Compact Deployable Antenna For Cubesat Units, Sarah Bolton, Dominic Doty, Peter Rivera

Mechanical Engineering

CubeSats are an appealing platform for space exploration due to their low build and launch costs. Due to their small size, communication rates are often severely limited, preventing missions beyond low earth orbit. A low cost, high gain, high frequency antenna is needed to extend the capabilities of CubeSats.

The goal of the project was to design and build an axisymmetric parabolic antenna that could be deployed from a 10cm x 10cm x 15cm (1.5U) volume and operate at Ka band frequencies. The design selected consisted of an expanding perimeter truss supporting a tensioned mesh reflector. The perimeter truss was …

Addressing Cyber Harassment: An Overview Of Hate Crimes In Cyberspace, Danielle Keats Citron

Journal of Law, Technology, & the Internet

"This short piece will take a step back and give an overhead view of the problem of cyber harassment and the destructive impact it can have on victims’ lives. Then, it will address about what the law can do to combat online harassment and how a legal agenda can be reconciled with the First Amendment. Finally, it will turn to recent changes in social media companies’ treatment of online abuse and what that might mean for our system of free expression." Symposium Article.

Fracking Fad: The Morally Ambiguous Method Of Extraction And The Trade Secret Protections Of Its Chemical Formulas, Vince Villio

Journal of Law, Technology, & the Internet

"Hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) has taken the nation’s political soapbox by storm in the last decade, despite being in practice since the mid-20th century. The recent surge of debate comes from an increasing amount of states passing regulatory schemes for when fracking is used in the extraction of natural gas and other energy producing materials. The regulation of energy extraction has been and continues to be a state issue rather than federal. One of the major concerns of the energy industry with new regulation is the increasing demand for disclosure of the chemicals and processes used in fracking, something the industry …

The Right To Be Forgotten: A Step In The Right Direction For Cyberspace Law And Policy, Lyndsay Cook

Journal of Law, Technology, & the Internet

This comment examines a case referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union (“EU”) on “a Spanish citizen’s complaint against Google Spain and Google Inc.. arguing that an auction notice of his repossessed home on Google’s search results, violated his privacy rights because the repossession proceeding had been resolved long ago, and was no longer relevant. The EU court was asked to decide whether an individual has the right to request that his or her personal data be removed from accessibility via a search engine (‘the right to be forgotten’). In a landmark decision, the EU court held …

The Crime Behind The Bedroom Door: Unequal Governmental Regulation Of Civilian And Military Spouses, Krista Bordatto

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

Unbeknownst to soldiers, when they sign on the dotted line, pledging to defend the freedom America stands for, they also sign away their freedom to make decisions regarding their private sex life. The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) mandates that a soldier be subject to prosecution for having sexual intercourse with someone who is not his or her spouse. Although a majority of states have done away with the historical norm of criminalizing adultery, choosing instead to simply use evidence of adultery to support divorce petitions, the military continues to vigorously prosecute adulterous acts. In this regard, the military …

Do As I Say, Not As I Do: Sexual Health Education And The Criminalization Of Teen Sexuality In The United States, Sonya Laddon Rahders

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

The subjects of sexual health education and adolescent sexuality in the United States are at best taboo, and at worst, the sites of serious - and sometimes even deadly- moral and social battles. Abstinence-only education programs are prevalent throughout the country, despite the increasingly common knowledge that they are woefully ineffective at decreaing rates of teen pregnancy and STI transmission. This note examines the failures of sexual health education through another lens: that of juvenile criminal punishment. Hypothesizing that states with more restrictive education regimes will also have stricter criminal penalties for adolescent sexual offenses, the author surveys the intersections …

Ecologically And Socially Sustainable Livestock Development In Marginal Areas, Ilse Köhler-Rollefson

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

“Marginal areas” are perceived as difficult and unproductive landscapes, always under the threat of drought, desertification and poverty. Yet, both dryland and high altitude marginal areas have an extraordinary output of livestock products; in the efficiency of producing human-edible protein they far surpass more fertile areas. This productivity under adverse climatic conditions rests on sophisticated strategies and social institutions developed by pastoral communities to deal with variability in the availability of resources. It depends on the use of animal genetic resources that are adapted to make best use of local vegetation and can cope with seasonal variations in availability. Livestock …

Climate-Smart Brachiaria For Improving Livestock Production In East Africa: Emerging Opportunities, Sita R. Ghimire, Donald M. G. Njarui, Mupenzi Mutimura, Juan A. Cardoso, Linda Johnson, Elias M. Gichangi, Suliana Teasdale, Kennedy Odokonyero, John Caradus, Idupulapati M. Rao, Appolinaire Djikeng

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

Brachiaria grass is an important tropical forage of African origin with desirable attributes of agricultural and environmental significance. Brachiaria has been extensively cultivated as a pasture across the tropics except in its endemic provenance of Africa. In 2013, a collaborative research program was initiated in Kenya and Rwanda with the aim of improving the availability of quality livestock feeds adapted to drought and low fertility soils using Brachiaria. The outcomes sought were increased livestock productivity leading to improved farmer income and the development of seed production opportunities. The program has identified five preferred cultivars, and four of them are currently …

Recent Trends In Breeding Of Tropical Grass And Forage Species, J. S. Sandhu, Dinesh Kumar, Vijay Kumar Yadav, Tejveer Singh, R. P. Sah, Auji Radhakrishna

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

Germplasm enrichment in major tropical grasses and their characterization for emerging environmental challenges have been major focussed area in the recent past. Breeding efforts in tropical grasses are still limited to few selected species viz. Panicum spp, Cenchrus spp, Pennisetum spp and Bracharia spp and all other grasses use of land races for varietal development through selection have been major source of improvement. The pace of breeding efforts in the tropical grasses have been slowed because of many inherent characteristics viz. apomixis, poor seed set, high photo and thermo sensitivity often creating problem in designing and implementing an effective breeding …

Wastelands Of The Mind: The Identity Crisis Of India’S Savanna Grasslands, Abi Tamim Vanak

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

The idea that wastelands are unproductive continues to be pervasive and is used by various agencies to gain control over marginal landscapes and remake them for productive purposes with dire results.

Tropical Grasslands--Trends, Perspectives And Future Prospects, Panjab Singh

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

This paper attempts a rapid summary of the present day state of tropical grassland and livestock based production systems globally, especially in tropics, in relation to recent trends, future assessment, grassland rehabilitation and management strategies, future perspectives of grassland science and development including policy imperatives.

Combatting Gender Privilege And Recognizing A Woman’S Right To Privacy In Public Spaces: Arguments To Criminalize Catcalling And Creepshots, Marc Tran

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

This comment explores two permutations of entitlement to women’s attention and bodies in public: street harassment (“catcalling”) and upskirt and down-blouse photography (collectively, “creepshots”). Part I is devoted to discussing street harassment—its harms (on an individual and societal scale), legal solutions, and the limits of the law. Part II is devoted to creepshots—their harms, the evolution of the perpetrator, and legal solutions. Both catcalling and creepshots disproportionately impact women. As such, an acknowledgement of gender privilege is a necessary prerequisite to exploring the harms and possible remedies of street harassment and up-skirt photography. There have been various attempts by men …

Medicaid As Coverture, Thomas E. Simmons

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

Antiquated views of women’s property rights and the status conferred by a marital relationship deprived a woman of separate property rights, treated the spouses as one unit incapable of contracting with one another, and transferred liability for one spouse’s debts to the other. These archaic, even offensive laws were largely repealed in the mid-nineteenth century. Today, women expect to enjoy a legal existence that is not consumed by the status of marriage, and to exercise property rights largely free from interference or paternalism. An examination of Medicaid eligibility rules reveals the retention and even reinstatement of the legal fiction of …

Exploring The Signaling Function Of Idiosyncratic Deals And Their Interaction, Violet T. Ho, Dejun Tony Kong

Management Faculty Publications

By adopting signaling theory as the overarching framework and integrating self-determination theory, we examined the signaling function of task i-deals, financial i-deals, and their interaction. Across three studies with varying measures, we found that task i-deals, independently and jointly with financial i-deals, conveyed a positive message regarding competence in that they were positively related to recipients’ competence need satisfaction. In turn, competence need satisfaction positively related to organizational citizenship behaviors. The competence-signaling function of task i-deals and task-financial i-deals interaction remained significant even after accounting for leader-member exchange, organization-based self-esteem, and perceived organizational support. Financial i-deals, however, did not exhibit …

11 Polk's 1932-33 West Chester Borough Directory, James Jones

History of West Chester, Pennsylvania

No abstract provided.

Negotiating Federalism And The Structural Constitution: Navigating The Separation Of Powers Both Vertically And Horizontally, Erin Ryan

Scholarly Publications

This essay explores the emerging literature on the negotiation of structural constitutional governance, to which Professor Aziz Huq has made an important contribution in The Negotiated Structural Constitution, 114 Colum. L. Rev. 1595 (2014). In the piece, Professor Huq reviews the negotiation of constitutional entitlements and challenges the conventional wisdom about the limits of political bargaining as a means of allocating authority among the three branches of government. He argues that constitutional ambiguities in the horizontal allocation of power are sometimes best resolved through legislative-executive negotiation, just as uncertain grants of constitutional authority are already negotiated between state and federal …

Information Privacy And Data Security, Lauren Henry Scholz

Scholarly Publications

Legal academic and policy discourse generally presumes that information privacy and data security are interchangeable goals. The conventional wisdom is that data security is a handmaiden of information privacy, and so what serves data security will serve information privacy. However, this view is an oversimplification of the relationship between the two fields. This Essay aids law and policy development in both fields by correctly defining their relationship to one another. Data security has separate objectives from information privacy that can be agnostic or even in opposition to information privacy. The law should acknowledge information privacy and data security as separate …

A Gender Integrative Conceptualization Of Entrepreneurship, Susan Clark Muntean, Banu Ozkazanc-Pan

New England Journal of Entrepreneurship

Guided by feminist perspectives, we critique existing approaches to the study of women’s entrepreneurship on epistemological grounds and suggest that the entrepreneurship field needs to recognize gendered assumptions in theorizing. Deploying a feminist framework, we suggest that understanding the “gender gap” in entrepreneurship requires focus on institutional and structural barriers women entrepreneurs face. Existing studies of women entrepreneurs often compare women with men without considering how gender and gender relations impact the very concepts and ideas of entrepreneurship. We propose, therefore, a conceptualization of entrepreneurship that illuminates gender bias and calls attention to the interrelated individual, institutional, and structural barriers …