Law Commons^™

The Precarious Art Of Classifying Facts, Allison Orr Larsen

Duke Law Journal Online

No abstract provided.

Esg And Securities Litigation: A Basic Contradiction, Aneil Kovvali

Duke Law Journal

Companies are increasingly expected to publicly report on not only their traditional financial results, but also environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) issues. Trillions of dollars are being invested with ESG considerations in mind, and boosters urge that ESG investing can address environmental and social impacts that are normally ignored by managers focused on share prices. This raises the question of how companies should be punished if they lie about ESG matters. How should the traditional elements of securities fraud map onto the novel ESG context? Commentators have vigorously debated ESG’s relationship to the materiality element of securities fraud. But the …

"We're Not Selling Ice Cream Here": Plcaa, The Predicate Exception, And Providing Relief For Plaintiffs, Emma Kilroy

Duke Law Journal

In 2005, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (“PLCAA”) put a stop to most civil litigation against the firearms industry. In the nineteen years since, victims of gun violence have attempted to bring claims against members of the firearms industry, with varying degrees of success, using an exception to PLCAA known as the predicate exception. Recently, states have begun to pass legislation creating a right of action for plaintiffs to take advantage of the predicate exception. Whether the new legislation will be successful, however, remains to be seen.

This Note examines all of the available cases considering the …

Full Faith And Credit In The Post-Roe Era, Celia P. Janes

Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy Sidebar

In 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, once again leaving the question of whether abortion should be legal to individual state legislatures. This decision allowed the Texas law known as S.B. 8, alternatively known as the Texas Heartbeat Act, to go into effect. The law allows private individuals to sue anyone who has performed or has aided and abetted the performance or inducement of an abortion in Texas. California responded to this law with Assembly Bill 2091, which prevents California state courts from issuing subpoenas arising under S.B. 8 and similar laws in other states. This Note addresses …

Neglected Discovery, Jenia I. Turner, Ronald F. Wright, Michael Braun

Duke Law Journal

In recent decades, many states have expanded discovery in criminal cases. These reforms were designed to make the criminal process fairer and more efficient. The success of these changes, however, depends on whether defense attorneys actually use the new discovery opportunities to represent their clients more effectively. Records from digital evidence platforms reveal that defense attorneys sometimes fail to carry out their professional duty to review discovery.

Analyzing a novel dataset we obtained from digital evidence platforms used in Texas, we found that defense attorneys never accessed any available electronic discovery in a substantial number of felony cases between 2018 …

Journal Staff

Duke Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Show Me The Green: The Battle For Investor Trust In Esg Funds, Benjamin R. Lukas

Duke Law Journal

Environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) funds enable earnest investors to align their money with their values. Some believe that ESG funds can promote a more sustainable and just economy by encouraging companies to adopt better practices and by divesting from those that do not. Others expect that funds with limited carbon exposure will outperform as climate change imposes regulatory and financial risks on carbon-intensive industries. Research suggests that younger investors overwhelmingly support the idea behind ESG investing; one-third even report a willingness to forgo 10 percent or more of their retirement savings to protect the environment.

Unfortunately, ESG products also …

Next-Generation Data Governance, Kimberly A. Houser, John W. Bagby

Duke Law & Technology Review

The proliferation of sensors, electronic payments, click-stream data, location-tracking, biometric feeds, and smart home devices, creates an incredibly profitable market for both personal and non-personal data. It is also leading to an amplification of harm to those from or about whom the data is collected. Because federal law provides inadequate protection for data subjects, there are growing calls for organizations to implement data governance solutions. Unfortunately, in the U.S., the concept of data governance has not progressed beyond the management and monetization of data. Many organizations operate under an outdated paradigm which fails to consider the impact of data use …

Corpus Linguistics And The Original Public Meaning Of The Sixteenth Amendment, Thomas R. Lee, Lawrence B. Solum, James C. Phillips, Jesse A. Egbert

Duke Law Journal Online

Moore v. United States raises the question whether unrealized gains, such as an increase in property value or a stock portfolio, constitute “incomes, from whatever source derived” under the original meaning of the Sixteenth Amendment. Moore is widely viewed as the most important tax case to reach the United States Supreme Court in decades. It is also an opportunity for the Court to refine its theory and method of finding original meaning.

We focus here on the original public meaning of the Sixteenth Amendment—the ordinary, common meaning attributed to its text by the general public in 1913. So far, the …

Communication With Public Officials In The Modern Age Of Social Media: Does It Violate The First Amendment When Public Officials Block Private Individuals From Their Social Media Pages?, Emily Cohen

Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy Sidebar

In the modern world, social media dominates. It is considered an almost essential function of public officials, ranging from the President of the United States to local politicians, to maintain at least one social media page to keep the public updated on their policies and current events. As public officials shift toward social media to communicate with the public, these social media sites become the new spaces for public discourse, with members of the public often commenting on or responding to public officials' posts. As more public discourse occurs on these sites, and individuals begin to criticize their public officials …

Ukraine’S Supreme Court: Upholding Justice Amid War, Olena Kibenko, Cristobal Diaz

Judicature International

No abstract provided.

Tech Platforms And The Common Law Of Carriers, Ganesh Sitaraman, Morgan Ricks

Duke Law Journal

Ever since Justice Clarence Thomas observed in a concurrence that tech platforms like Twitter were analogous to common carriers, there has been increasing interest in the possibility of regulating them under common carrier principles. Most of the conversation has centered on potential legislation, not on applying the common law’s common carrier obligations to big tech. Indeed, when Ohio sued Google under the common law’s common carrier principles, commentators called the lawsuit “bizarre.”

In this Article, we argue that far from being “bizarre,” tech platforms are and should be subject to liability at common law for violating the duties of common …

Journal Staff

Duke Law Journal

No abstract provided.

"Race-Blind" Redistricting Algorithms, Kayla Swan

Duke Law Journal

Litigants increasingly use algorithmic evidence in redistricting cases, employing a collection of algorithmically generated plans to point out the outlier status of the state’s current plan. But with the Supreme Court’s declaration of a race-blind Equal Protection Clause in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the constitutionality of these methods as used in racial gerrymandering cases remains uncertain. Other scholars have examined the potential impacts of race blindness as an algorithmic constraint. This Note instead interrogates the practical possibility of race-blind redistricting algorithms and finds the promise of blindness illusory. Rather, requirements to limit racial inputs in redistricting algorithms …

Journal Staff

Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law

No abstract provided.

Legal Remedies To Collective Trauma In Northern Ireland, Katherine S. Thomas

Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law

How can a country legally address collective trauma? Northern Ireland faced this daunting question in 1998, when the signing of the Good Friday Agreement heralded the end of decades of sectarian violence known as the Troubles. More than two decades later, the social and economic damage of the Troubles lingers. Years of piecemeal reconciliation efforts have proved controversial and yielded inconsistent results. The "truth" of the Troubles remains a divisive issue, and the question of how Northern Ireland can achieve lasting reconciliation still looms. This Note offers an up-to-date review of transitional justice efforts in Northern Ireland and the ongoing …

Made In China, Sued In The U.S.: The Exploitation Of Civil Procedure In Cross-Border E-Commerce Trademark Infringement Cases, Lei Zhu

Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law

During the period of economic resurgence after the subprime mortgage crisis, China became a manufacturing powerhouse, with Amazon playing a pivotal role. Amazon's attractive policies lured Chinese e-commerce sellers to its platform, subsequently drawing many more customers with their competitive pricing. This surge, however, also invited Chinese counterfeiters onto Amazon's platform. Major brands responded by suing those counterfeit sellers for trademark infringement. As most Chinese sellers failed to attend trials, these cases almost always resulted in uncontested wins for the brands, thereby granting them access to the sellers' financial accounts as a means to satisfy the damage claimed. Many U.S. …

How To Destroy The Liberal International Order, Bryan H. Druzin

Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law

This Article argues that a policy of containment directed at China could have disastrous consequences on the stability of the global system. The liberal international order, created to promote international coordination and structure global trade, comprises key institutions such as the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. It is possible that much of the strength of these institutions stems from the fact that nations are "locked" into them simply because they are the only game in town. Put another way, the liberal order is, for lack of a better word, a "monopoly." …

Uncharted Waters: Should International Maritime Terrorism Be Included In The Jurisdiction Of The International Criminal Court?, Juan-Pablo Perez-Leon-Acevedo, Giorgi Chakhvadze

Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law

The International Criminal Court (ICC) lacks jurisdiction over international terrorism. Despite related academic literature, no academic publication discusses whether the ICC should have jurisdiction over international maritime terrorism. This deserves attention due to the increasing importance of this global phenomenon in the last few decades. Consequently, this Article considers whether international maritime terrorism should be included in the ICC’s jurisdiction. First, it discusses international maritime terrorism as a manifestation of the emerging international crime of international terrorism, examining i) whether there is an accepted or an emerging legal definition of international maritime terrorism, ii) whether international maritime terrorism is a …

Anti-Patents, Roy Baharad, Stuart Minor Benjamin, Ehud Gutte

Faculty Scholarship

Conventional wisdom has long perceived the patent and tort systems as separate legal entities, each tasked with a starkly different mission. Patent law rewards novel ideas; tort law deters harmful conduct. Against this backdrop, this Essay uncovers the opposing effects of patent and tort law on innovation, introducing the "injurer-innovator problem." Patent law incentivizes injurers --often uniquely positioned to make technological breakthroughs--by allowing them to profit from licensing their inventions to competitors. Yet tort law, by imposing liability for failures to invest in care, forces injurers to incur the cost of implementing their own innovations. When the cost of self-implementation …

Competition And Congestion In Trademark Law, Christopher Buccafusco, Jonathan S. Masur, Mark P. Mckenna

Faculty Scholarship

Trademark law exists to promote competition. If consumers know which companies make which products, they can more easily find the products they actually want to purchase. Trademark law has long treated “source significance”—the fact that a particular trademark is identified with a particular producer—as both necessary and sufficient for establishing a valid trademark. That is, trademark law has traditionally viewed source significance as the only necessary precondition for a trademark being pro-competitive. In this Article, we argue that this equation of source significance and pro-competitiveness is misguided. Some marks use words that are so closely connected with the product being …

Arbitrating Corruption, Rachel Brewster

Faculty Scholarship

One of the most controversial issues in international investment law is how arbitral panels should deal with investments tainted by corruption at their inception. The current practice of investment arbitrators is to refuse to hear investors’ claims when bribery allegations are substantiated. A recent wave of scholarship has attacked this “corruption defense,” arguing that the practice unfairly harms investors and encourages governments to maintain corrupt practices. This Essay responds to that scholarship, arguing that the current approach is the best policy choice on balance. The Essay analyzes three core policy questions at the heart of the debate: Would eliminating the …

Antisocial Innovation, Christopher Buccafusco, Samuel N. Weinstein

Faculty Scholarship

Innovation is a form of civic religion in the United States. In the popular imagination, innovators are heroic figures. Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs, and (for a while) Elizabeth Holmes were lauded for their vision and drive and seen to embody the American spirit of invention and improvement. For their part, politicians rarely miss a chance to trumpet their vision for boosting innovative activity. Popular and political culture alike treat innovation as an unalloyed good. And the law is deeply committed to fostering innovation, spending billions of dollars a year to make sure society has enough of it. But this sunny …

Corporate Racial Responsibility, Gina-Gail S. Fletcher, H. Timothy Lovelace Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

The 2020 mass protests in response to the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor had a significant impact on American corporations. Several large public companies pledged an estimated $50 billion to advancing racial equity and committed to various initiatives to internally improve diversity, equity, and inclusion. While many applauded corporations’ willingness to engage with racial issues, some considered it further evidence of corporate capitulation to extreme progressivism at shareholders’ expense. Others, while thinking corporate engagement was long overdue, critiqued corporate commitment as insincere.

Drawing on historical evidence surrounding the passage of Title II of the Civil Rights Act of …

The Right To A Glass Box: Rethinking The Use Of Artificial Intelligence In Criminal Justice, Brandon L. Garrett, Cynthia Rudin

Faculty Scholarship

Artificial intelligence (“AI”) increasingly is used to make important decisions that affect individuals and society. As governments and corporations use AI more pervasively, one of the most troubling trends is that developers so often design it to be a “black box.” Designers create AI models too complex for people to understand or they conceal how AI functions. Policymakers and the public increasingly sound alarms about black box AI. A particularly pressing area of concern has been criminal cases, in which a person’s life, liberty, and public safety can be at stake. In the United States and globally, despite concerns that …

False Accuracy In Criminal Trials: The Limits And Costs Of Cross Examination, Lisa Kern Griffin

Faculty Scholarship

According to the popular culture of criminal trials, skillful cross-examination can reveal the whole “truth” of what happened. In a climactic scene, defense counsel will expose a lying accuser, clear up the statements of a confused eyewitness, or surface the incentives and biases in testimony. Constitutional precedents, evidence theory, and trial procedures all reflect a similar aspiration—that cross-examination performs lie detection and thereby helps to produce accurate outcomes. Although conceptualized as a protection for defendants, cross-examination imposes some unexplored costs on them. Because it focuses on the physical presence of a witness, the current law of confrontation suggests that an …

Journal Staff

Law and Contemporary Problems

No abstract provided.

Education From Condemnations: Learning From State And Federal Reforms For A More Efficient And Just Eminent Domain, Lydia Culp

Duke Law Journal

Under current takings doctrine, governments can identify entire neighborhoods as “blighted,” condemn the private property within, and transfer it to another private owner who will use the land in a more economically advantageous way. This causes injustice by incentivizing governments and developers to target poor and vulnerable neighborhoods. And by letting governments and developers evade market forces, buy land at a bargain, and afford to take on more projects than they can manage effectively, it causes inefficiency. Economic development takings, when not abused, can help revitalize downtrodden neighborhoods, so an outright ban is not the answer. Neither is relying on …

Rethinking The Presumption Of Enablement In Nonpatent Prior Art, Gabrielle Carlini

Duke Law Journal

The rising popularity of tools such as preprint servers, open-access data sources, and generative artificial intelligence has resulted in a proliferation of prior art that has never been seen before under the current patent system. In a rapidly changing world, patent law is slow to catch up, and the current system is not equipped to handle the flood of incoming prior art. In the academic research setting in particular, while the use of preprint servers and open-source data has allowed researchers to participate in widespread information exchange, these tools have also generated a new, large class of prior art dedicated …

Journal Staff

Duke Law Journal

No abstract provided.