Law Commons^™

Election Emergencies: Voting In Times Of Pandemic, Michael T. Morley

Washington and Lee Law Review

Over the past century, two global pandemics have struck during American elections—the Spanish Flu of 1918 and COVID-19 in 2020. The legal system’s responses to those pandemics, occurring against distinct constitutional backdrops concerning voting rights, differed dramatically from each other. These pandemics highlight the need for states to address the impact of election emergencies, including public health crises, on the electoral process. States should adopt election emergency laws that both empower election officials to modify an election’s rules as necessary to respond to such disasters and set forth “redlines” to identify certain policies that, even in a disaster, are too …

Patent Eligibility And Cancer Therapy, Christopher B. Seaman

Washington and Lee Law Review

As an empirical legal scholar, I am pleased to report that Sasha Hoyt has done what very few law students—and even many law professors—could achieve. She successfully conducted a novel empirical study to assess the real-world impact of a U.S. Supreme Court decision, Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc., on venture capital (VC) investment in startups and other companies that develop medical diagnostic technology.

As Ms. Hoyt notes, patent protection is particularly important for startup companies, as it can help protect their innovations from unauthorized use, attract funding and other investments, and foster collaboration with third parties. In …