Law Commons^™

Judicial Review Of Copyright Examination, Thomas G. Field Jr

Law Faculty Scholarship

Copyright in qualifying United States works has always arisen upon creation. For many years, however, rights could be lost by failing to, e.g., provide notice, register and deposit copies when works were first published. In 1909 formal requirements were reduced, and the Supreme Court, in 1939, concluded that registration with the U.S Copyright Office was unnecessary to retain rights. Despite that, owners could not sue infringers without having registered.

Regarding registration as helpful if not obligatory, this paper compares the burden on moving parties in circumstances in which registration decisions may be challenged in courts.

Zurko, Gartside, And Lee: How Might They Affect Patent Prosecution?, Thomas G. Field Jr

Law Faculty Scholarship

Interactions between the PTO and the courts are more complex than for most agencies. PTO decisions may be challenged not only directly but also collaterally. In the latter context, the Supreme Court has sometimes been critical of the lax standards applied when issuing patents.

While being upheld in collateral review is the ultimate issue of concern to patentees, patents must first be obtained. Thus, this paper focuses on direct challenges to PTO actions--and more specifically, on the review arising under 35 U.S.C. §§ 141-44 as addressed in Zurko, Gartside, and Lee.

Since the Supreme Court reversed the …

Supplemental Environmental Projects Have Been Effectively Used In Citizen Suits To Deter Future Violations As Well As To Achieve Significant Additional Environmental Benefits, Edward Lloyd

Faculty Scholarship

Supplemental Environmental Projects (SUPs) are environmentally benefical projects included in settlements of environmental law enforcement cases. Courts have addressed SEPs in two contexts: where proposed by parties in consent decrees and where courts have fashioned SEPs as apart of the relief ordered in an enforcement case. SEPs have been extensively used in both government and citizen enforcement cases despite the nearly universal absence of any explicit legislative authorization by Congress. Congress has tangentially recognized the place of SEPs in the penalty and deterrence scheme by giving the Administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Attorney General …

Citizens To Preserve Overton Park V. Volpe, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

This essay is one of a series destined to appear in a Foundation Press book, Administrative Law Stories, now set for publication in the fall of 2005. The decision in Citizens to Preserve Overton Park v. Volpe represents a transition from political to judicial controls over decisions broadly affecting a wide range of community interests. Unmistakable and dramatic as it is, that transition is not universally applauded. But the transition was striking and quick. The late sixties and early seventies saw an explosion of new national legislation on social and environmental issues, that often provided explicitly or implicitly for citizen …

Judicial Review Of Agency Inaction: An Arbitrariness Approach, Lisa Schultz Bressman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Article contends that the current law governing judicial review of agency inaction, though consistent with the prevailing theory of agency legitimacy, is inconsistent with the founding principles of the administrative state. The Supreme Court's reluctance to allow judicial review of agency inaction reflects the popular view that agency decision-making should be subject foremost to the scrutiny of politically accountable officials. The difficulty is that even scholars who generally support this view of agency decision-making reject the Court's treatment of agency inaction. Yet these scholars have failed to appreciate the reason. The reason is that the founding principles of the …

The Epa's Risky Reasoning, Cary Coglianese, Gary E. Marchant

All Faculty Scholarship

Regulators must rely on science to understand problems and predict the consequences of regulatory actions, but science by itself cannot justify public policy decisions. We review the Environmental Protection Agency's efforts to justify recent changes to its National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for ozone and particulate matter, showing how the agency was able to cloak its policy judgments under the guise of scientific objectivity. By doing so, the EPA evaded accountability for a shifting and incoherent set of policy positions that will have major implications for public health and the economy. For example, even though EPA claimed to base …