Law Commons^™

"Zoning" Matters: Rluipa And The New Normal Of Religious Discrimination, Michael Allan Wolf

UF Law Faculty Publications

The protection of religious freedom under federal law waxes and wanes, depending on two unpredictable factors: judicial activism and congressional action. A review of dozens of cases involving alleged violations of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), including two recent cases heard by the Supreme Court and the Fourth Circuit, reveals for the first time that many litigants and judges have ignored the congressional injunction to limit the reach of RLUIPA to two (and only two) forms of land-use regulation: zoning and landmarking. Plaintiffs have instead used RLUIPA to challenge water and sewer, septic, fire prevention, building, …

The Judicial Humorist (Ed. William L. Prosser, 1952), George John Miller

Florida Law Review

No abstract provided.

Imperfect Insanity And Diminished Responsibility, E. Lea Johnston

UF Law Faculty Publications

Insanity’s status as an all-or-nothing excuse results in the disproportionate punishment of individuals whose mental disorders significantly impaired, but did not obliterate, their capacities for criminal responsibility. Prohibiting the trier of fact from considering impairment that does not meet the narrow definition of insanity contradicts commonly held intuitions about mental abnormality and gradations of responsibility. It results in systemic over-punishment, juror frustration, and, at times, arbitrary verdicts as triers of fact attempt to better apportion liability to blameworthiness.

This Article proposes a generic partial excuse: Diminished Responsibility from Mental Disability. This excuse could be asserted as an affirmative defense at …

Patent Notes For Engineers (C. D. Tuska, 1947), Silas K. Eshleman

Florida Law Review

No abstract provided.

Soviet Civil Law (Vladimir Gsovski, 1948), Karl Krastin

Florida Law Review

No abstract provided.

The American Law Of Collision (John Wheeler Griffin, 1949), Charles V. Silliman

Florida Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Parent's Guide To Social Media Safety, Catherine Grimley

Gator TeamChild Juvenile Law Clinic

The goal of this White Paper is to provide parents and other caregivers with a compilation of literature from some of the most popular social media platforms in one convenient place. It aims to help parents understand what parental controls and account settings are available, so they can facilitate important conversations with their teens regarding social media safety.

American Democracy And The State Constitutional Convention, Jonathan L. Marshfield

UF Law Faculty Publications

Fears about the health of American democracy are high. And with the Supreme Court loosening federal constraints and returning critical substantive issues to the states, there is new and particular interest in the democratic quality of state institutions. While some see opportunity in this decentralization, there is also good reason to believe that many states are failing to deliver on America’s democratic ideals. There are growing concerns, for example, that many state legislatures are enacting laws wildly misaligned with majority preferences on important issues like guns, abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, and healthcare. There are also deeper structural concerns regarding partisan gerrymandering, …

Dazed & Confused... And... Psychotic?, Judy Ann Clausen, Joanmarie I. Davoli, Benjamin W. Lacy Md

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article examines marijuana’s impact on developing brains. Secondly, this Article explores the Green Rush – the rise of the multibillion-dollar marijuana industry and the media and legal environment that unleashed massive marijuana commercialization. The Article compares decriminalization with commercialization, illustrating that it is possible to address social justice concerns of arrests, incarceration, and criminal records for marijuana use without unleashing a multibillion-dollar industry that markets to youth. The Article concludes by exploring approaches from Australia, the United Kingdom, and Sweden, all of which continue to criminalize marijuana, in part because they have observed the U.S. Green Rush and its …

Everything You Want: The Paradox Of Customized Intellectual Property Regimes, Derek E. Bambauer

UF Law Faculty Publications

Special interest groups share a dream: enacting legislation customized for, and hopefully drafted by, their industry. Customized rules created via legislative capture, though, are the worst case scenario from a public choice perspective: they enable narrow interests to capture rents without generating sufficient societal benefits. American intellectual property law offers useful case studies in legislative capture: special interests have created their own rules three times in the past forty years with the Semiconductor Chip Protection Act, Audio Home Recording Act, and Vessel Hull Design Protection Act. Paradoxically, though, these customized IP systems have consistently disappointed their drafters: all three of …

Tort Liability For Physical Harm To Police Arising From Protest: Common-Law Principles For A Politicized World, Ellen M. Bublick, Jane R. Bambauer

UF Law Faculty Publications

When police officers bring tort suits for physical harms suffered during protest, courts must navigate two critically important sets of values—on the one hand, protesters’ rights to free speech and assembly, and on the other, the value of officers’ lives, health, and rights of redress. This year courts, including the United States Supreme Court, must decide who, if anyone, can be held accountable for severe physical harms suffered by police called upon to respond to protest. Two highly visible cases well illustrate the trend. In one, United States Capitol Police officers were injured on January 6, 2021, during organized attempts …

Children Seen But Not Heard, Stacey B. Steinberg

UF Law Faculty Publications

Children are expected to abide by the will of their parents. In the last 200 years, American jurisprudence has given parents the ability to control their children’s upbringing with few exceptions. The principle governing this norm is that parents know best and will use their better knowledge to protect their children’s welfare.

The COVID-19 pandemic, public school rules, and children’s privacy laws offer modern examples of regulations in which the interests of parents and children may not align. Minors may want access to vaccines, despite a parent’s refusal to sign a consent form. Minors may want to talk to their …

Introducing Law Students To Transactional Practice: From Using Precedent To Closing The Deal, Ben Fernandez

UF Law Faculty Publications

My name is Ben Fernandez. I teach contract drafting at the University of Florida, Levin College of Law, and I'm going to talk about introducing students to transactional practice from using precedents to closing the deal. Basically, what I'm going to describe is things I do to supplement Tina Stark's Drafting Contracts: How and Why Lawyers Do What They Do. I'm going to give you a whole bunch of, I hope, useful, teaching ideas on how to do that.

The Myth Of Children’S Online Privacy Protection, Stacey Steinberg

UF Law Faculty Publications

Digital technology has changed the landscape young people face as they come of age. It has changed how children interact with their parents, schools, community organizations, and the state. Despite many benefits, digital technologies that employ data collection, algorithms, and artificial intelligence pose significant risks for the next generation. Private businesses can collect, use, and sell a child’s data in ways never imagined by their families. Information collected by third parties with good intentions can be stolen through data breaches. Through faulty algorithms, websites can make inaccurate assumptions about young people’s interests, teachers can make inaccurate assumptions about a student’s …

Building Resilience By Removing Barriers: Addressing Structural Impediments To Advocacy By Nonprofit Organizations On Behalf Of The Unenfranchised, Kirsten Widner, Heather Kolinsky

UF Law Faculty Publications

Charitable contributions, particularly from private foundations, are an essential source of support for many nonprofit charitable organizations. However, the ability to accept these contributions comes with significant restrictions on lobbying and advocacy. Using vulnerability theory and an original survey of nonprofit advocacy organizations, we show that current restrictions on 501(c)(3) organizations disproportionally limit advocacy on behalf of the most politically disadvantaged groups—those without the right to vote. This, in turn, reinforces existing inequalities in whose voices are heard and whose interests are considered by policymakers. This Article argues that reforming the laws that structure what organizations can take tax-deductible charitable …

The First Amendment And Professorial Classroom Speech, Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky

UF Law Faculty Publications

A review of Keith E. Whittington's article, Professorial Speech, The First Amendment, and Legislative Restrictions on Classroom Discussions. 58 Wake Forest L. Rev. 463 (2023).

Holdings As Hypotheses: Teaching Contextual Understanding And Enhancing Engagement, Lisa M. De Sanctis

UF Law Faculty Publications

When the Pinball Wizard asked his well-timed question, he not only lit up the 1L classroom with a cacophony of opinions but also illuminated deep confusion about the meaning of, and distinctions between, “rules” and “holdings.”

The practice of both oversimplifying and conflating the parts of a judicial opinion, particularly rules and holdings, is common among law professors, law school success materials, and, to an extent, even legal writing texts. Coupled with the novice law student’s search for right answers and found meaning, 1Ls often find themselves understandably frustrated and confused. This Article argues that the resulting confusion about rules …

Do Ais Dream Of Electric Boards?, Robert J. Rhee

UF Law Faculty Publications

When artificial intelligence (“AI”) acquires self-awareness, agency, and unique intelligence, it will attain ontological personhood. Management of firms by AI would be technologically and economically feasible. The law could confer AI with the status of legal personhood, as it did with the personhood of traditional business firms in the past, thus dispensing with the need for inserting AI as property within the legal boundary of a firm. As a separate and distinct entity, AI could function independently as a manager in the way that legal or natural persons do today: i.e., AI as director, officer, partner, member, or manager. Such …

Bankruptcy Fiduciaries, Christopher D. Hampson

UF Law Faculty Publications

Does social enterprise end with insolvency? Is bankruptcy all about the bottom line? The answer to these questions begins with understanding the estate in bankruptcy and the fiduciaries that control its fate. Yet the law of fiduciary duties in bankruptcy is undertheorized, conflicted, and muddled. After almost fifty years of confusion, this Article provides the first comprehensive examination of the nature and source of fiduciary duties in bankruptcy. Although the Supreme Court has intoned “maximize the value of the estate” as a shorthand, I argue that the trustee’s duty of obedience in reorganization cases gives rise to a “duty to …

The Multitudinous Racial Harms Caused By Florida's Anti-Dei And "Stop Woke" Laws, Katheryn Russell-Brown

UF Law Faculty Publications

Since 2021, Florida has passed legislation that radically redefines how educators address race-related topics in the university classroom. Two laws in particular, House Bill 7 (HB 7 or the "Stop WOKE Act") and Senate Bill 266 (SB 266), which outlaws diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs at Florida universities, have led the charge. The goals of this Article are three-fold. First, to demonstrate how HB 7 and SB 266 have created a devasting and powerful educational force in Florida, a force that diminishes and punishes certain forms of racial discussion and inquiry in the college classroom. Second, to show the …

Ai, Artists, And Anti-Moral Rights, Derek E. Bambauer, Robert W. Woods

UF Law Faculty Publications

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools are increasingly used to imitate the distinctive characteristics of famous artists, such as their voice, likeness, and style. In response, legislators have introduced bills in Congress that would confer moral rights protections, such as control over attribution and integrity, upon artists. This Essay argues such measures are almost certain to fail because of deep-seated, pervasive hostility to moral rights measures in U.S. intellectual property law. It analyses both legislative measures and judicial decisions that roll back moral rights, and explores how copyright’s authorship doctrines manifest a latent hostility to these entitlements. The Essay concludes with …

Target(Ed) Advertising, Derek E. Bambauer

UF Law Faculty Publications

Targeted advertising—using data about consumers to customize the ads they receive—is deeply controversial. It also creates a regulatory quandary. Targeted ads generate more money than untargeted ones for apps and online platforms. Apps and platforms depend on this revenue stream to offer free services to users, if not for their financial viability altogether. However, targeted advertising also generates significant privacy risks and consumer resentment. Despite sustained attention to this issue, neither legal scholars nor policymakers have crafted interventions that address both concerns, and existing regulatory regimes for targeted advertising have critical gaps.

This Article makes three key contributions to the …

Digital Dollar: Privacy And Transparency Dilemma, Jiaying Jiang

UF Law Faculty Publications

Many have voiced concerns that the digital dollar, a digital form of central bank money, will facilitate government surveillance, thus depriving users of privacy. This article investigates critical technical designs proposed by leading think tanks, central banks, and scholars from interdisciplinary fields, reaching a surprising conclusion that contradicts popular belief: a digital dollar can offer better privacy protection than existing digital payment systems. The article argues that those expressing concerns have made two flawed assumptions: (1) that digital dollar data is fully transparent regarding personal information and transaction details and (2) that the government or Federal Reserve has unlimited access …

The Florida-Ucc Filing System Disaster, Lynn M. Lopucki

UF Law Faculty Publications

Since the widespread adoption of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) in the 1960s, the UCC's name-based filing system has been a constant embarrassment to its drafters. System overhauls in 1998 and 2010 failed to fix it.

In Florida, the problem came to a head in 1944 Beach Boulevard, LLC v. Live Oak Banking. Based on a widely shared misunderstanding of how Florida's unorthodox, privatized UCC filing system worked, the Florida Supreme Court held that the system had no search logic, so the UCC § 9-506(c) safe harbor from debtor name errors did not apply. Instead, a "zero-tolerance" test applied, …

Studying Conspiracy Theory After The (Current) Rise Of Right-Wing Populism, Mark Fenster

UF Law Faculty Publications

The American historian Richard Hofstadter intended his still-influential essay on the “Paranoid Style in American Politics,” which initiated the modern study of conspiracy theories, as a response to the mid-1950s rise of right-wing populism in the US. Reflecting on the lessons we can learn from the insights and weaknesses of Hofstadter’s timely intervention into contemporary politics, as well as the author’s three decades studying conspiracy theories, the chapter asks how current academic work, which takes place within and responds to another rise in rightwing populism, should understand and intervene in the present and prepare for the future.