Law Commons^™

The Antitrusting Of Patentability, Saurabh Vishnubhakat

Faculty Scholarship

Deciding a patent’s validity is costly, and so is deciding it incorrectly. Judges and juries must expend significant resources in order to reach a patent validity determination that is properly informed by the relevant facts. At the same time, patent validity determinations reached quickly and cheaply may conserve resources today while creating future costs. Wrongly preserving an invalid patent can distort the competitive market and enable abuses, such as nuisance litigation. Meanwhile, wrongly striking down a valid patent can undermine incentives for continued investment and commercialization in knowledge assets. Courts facing patent validity issues have begun to strike this balance …

Reducing Transportation Emissions In The Northeast And Mid-Atlantic: Fuel System Considerations, Gabriel Pacyniak, Drew Veysey, James Bradbury

Faculty Scholarship

In support of states interested in learning more about market-based policy options, the Georgetown Climate Center developed Reducing Transportation Emissions in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic: Fuel System Considerations to explore technical aspects of a possible regional cap-and-invest policy, as an illustrative example of a market-based approach to a multi-state transportation policy. The paper focuses on two subjects: which fuels might be covered under a policy, and which entities in the transportation fuel supply chain might be responsible for reducing emissions.

The recommendations made in this paper are intended to support robust market-based policies that provide flexibility and enable innovation while …

The Gifts Of Athanassios N. Yiannopoulos: Ever To Excel!, David D. Meyer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Manual On Pro Bono Appeals Programs For State Court Appeals, Verónica C. Gonzales-Zamora

Faculty Scholarship

Throughout the country, appellate bench, bar, and court staff have designed pro bono programs for state court appeals to help litigants of modest means who cannot afford quality appellate representation. The aim of this manual is to serve as a practical tool for appellate pro bono programs and for the expansion of and cross-pollination between existing programs. The manual provides a basic framework and then provides specific information on programs in 24 states.

Veronica Gonzales-Zamora worked on the sections covering Arizona, Colorado, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Mexico, Virginia, and Washington D.C.

Florida's "Cruises To Nowhere" Industry: Current Status And Future Prospects, Robert Jarvis

Faculty Scholarship

Obtaining Reliable Information about the "cruises to nowhere" CTN industry in Florida always has been difficult.

Introduction: Perceived Legitimacy And The State Judiciary, G. Alexander Nunn

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Nunn provides an introduction for the Symposium: The Least Understood Branch: The Demands and Challenges of the State Judiciary.

To Speak With One Voice: The Political Effects Of Centralizing The International Legal Defense Of The State, Guillermo J. Garcia Sanchez

Faculty Scholarship

When a government official defends a case before an international court, whose interest should he/she be representing? In today’s era of expanding international treaties that give standing to individual claimants, international courts review the actions of different government actors through the yardsticks of international law. The state is not unitary; alleged victims can bring international claims against various government entities including the executive, the legislature, the administrative branch, and the judiciary. Yet, the international legal defense of government actions is in the hands of the executive power. This paper focuses on the consequences of this centralization for inter-branch politics. It …

Thinking About The Trans-Pacific Partnership (And A Mega-Regional Agreement On Life Support), Peter K. Yu

Faculty Scholarship

Commissioned for a conference on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) at VNU University of Economics & Law in Vietnam, this article provides a retrospective analysis of the partnership. It begins with a historical overview of the TPP. The article then examines the partnership’s status in light of the United States' withdrawal and contends that the TPP will exert considerable influence regardless of whether it is dead or alive.

The second half of this article identifies three interrelated but distinct aspects of the TPP: (1) as a TRIPS-plus intellectual property agreement; (2) as a regional investment agreement; and (3) as a plurilateral …

Equality, Sovereignty, And The Family In Morales-Santana, Kristin Collins

Faculty Scholarship

In Sessions v. Morales-Santana, ³ the Supreme Court encountered a body of citizenship law that has long relied on family membership in the construction of the nation’s borders and the composition of the polity.⁴ The particular statute at issue in the case regulates the transmission of citizenship from American parents to their foreign-born children at birth, a form of citizenship known today as derivative citizenship.⁵ When those children are born outside marriage, the derivative citizenship statute makes it more difficult for American fathers, as compared with American mothers, to transmit citizenship to their foreign-born children.⁶ Over …

The Admissibility Of Confessions Under Israeli Law: Procedural And Substantive Differences Between The “Free And Voluntary” Standard And The Judicial Exclusionary Rule For Unlawfully Obtained Evidence, Binyamin Blum, Yoram Rabin, Barak Ariel

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Decomposing The “Tacit Knowledge Problem:” Codification Of Knowledge And Access In Crispr Gene-Editing, Neil Thompson, Samantha Zyontz

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The New York Times Interviews Kastenberg On The History Of The Military Charge: Misbehavior Before The Enemy, Joshua E. Kastenberg

Faculty Scholarship

The New York Times interviews Joshua Kastenberg on the Military Charge, Misbehavior Before the Enemy, regarding a Navy Seal. Kastenberg provides history and context for previous uses of this charge.

Restating International Torts: Problems Of Process And Substance In The Ali's Third Restatement Of Torts, Nancy J. Moore

Faculty Scholarship

The American Law Institute’s Third Restatement of Torts was initially conceived as a series of separate projects, each with its own reporters. From 1998 through 2010, the ALI completed and published three different segments: Products Liability, Apportionment of Liability, and Liability for Physical and Emotional Harm. Initially, the ALI did not intend to restate the intentional torts, believing that the Second Restatement’s treatment of these torts was clear and largely authoritative. It was ultimately persuaded that there were numerous unresolved issues that needed to be addressed. As a result, it authorized a new project on Intentional Torts---a project that is …

The Law And The Human, Laura Spitz

Faculty Scholarship

The law plays a role in the social construction of what it means to be human. The stakes are high, especially for those, like the Indigenous Peoples of North America, whose bodies and cultures have been both humanized and dehumanized through law.

Listen on Soundcloud.

Full hyperlink: https://soundcloud.com/cornellcas/the-law-and-the-human

The Technology Requirements Of The First Electronic Monitoring Agreement In Us For Zappers, Phantomware, And Other Sales Suppression Devices, Richard Thompson Ainsworth, Robert Chicoine

Faculty Scholarship

On August 30, 2017, a plea was entered in the case of case of State of Washington v. Wong, Wash. Super. Ct., No. 16-1-00179-0, and as a result the first electronic monitoring agreement of sales transactions in the US (the “Monitoring Agreement”) was legislatively imposed on a retail business.

The Monitoring Agreement was negotiated between the State of Washington Department of Revenue (the “WA DOR”) and the taxpayer over a period of several months and is comprised of two parts: the basic agreement, which covered the obligations and rights of the parties, and an appendix, which defines the scope of …

Three Strikes For Copyright, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

How should copyright law change to take account of the internet? Should copyright expand to plug the internet’s leakiness and protect content that the internet would otherwise make more freely available? Or, should copyright relax its strict liability regime given diverse and productive reuses in the internet age and the benefits networked diffusion provides users and second-generation creators? Answering these questions depends on what we think copyright is for and how it is used and confronted by creators and audiences. In a new article studying these questions in the very focused setting of Wikipedia articles about baseball and baseball players …

Arming The Second Amendment - And Enforcing The Fourteenth, William Araiza

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Rape Is Trespass, Anita Bernstein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Presidential Executive Orders Duel Over Floodplain Definition As S.E. Florida Prepares For Sea Level Rise, Brion Blackwelder

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Bankruptcy Of Refusing To Hire Persons Who Have Filed Bankruptcy, Terrence Cain

Faculty Scholarship

In 1978, Congress made it illegal for government employers to deny employment to, terminate the employment of, or discriminate with respect to employment against a person who has filed bankruptcy. In 1984, Congress extended this prohibition to private employers by making it illegal for such employers to terminate the employment of, or discriminate with respect to employment against a person who has filed bankruptcy. Under the law as it currently exists, private employers can refuse to hire a person who has filed bankruptcy solely because that person has filed for bankruptcy. Meanwhile, employers have substantially increased their use of credit …

An Examination Of Policy Options For Achieving Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reductions In New Jersey, Gabriel Pacyniak

Faculty Scholarship

An Examination of Policy Options for Achieving Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reductions in New Jersey surveys emissions and energy trends, describes a “deep decarbonization pathway” for the state, and identifies the types of policies that would be necessary to achieve those reductions. Many of the policies address the power and transportation sectors, which account for more than 60 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions from New Jersey. The report also includes options for improving building efficiency, reducing methane leaks from natural gas infrastructure, restoring natural carbon sinks in forests and wetlands, and incorporating equity considerations to address the needs of frontline …

Safeguarding Judicial Integrity By Making The Executive Branch's Unfettered Amicus Gateway Transparent: An Argument For The Supreme Court To Exercise Its Inherent Authority To Make Public The President's Tax And Investment Records, Joshua E. Kastenberg

Faculty Scholarship

This article proposes a rule to "level the playing field" in amicus practice. Currently, the executive branch is not required to submit a fiscal disclosure statement to the Court or the lower courts when filing an amicus brief. But there is little evidence to support that the executive branch is filing "in the best interest of the United States," due to the lack of transparency in the White House. Using a historic model as well as contemporary ethics analysis, it becomes clear that there is no historic precedent for requiring the executive branch to conduct itself in the best interest …

A Framework For Understanding Subfederal Enforcement Of Immigration Laws, Huyen Pham

Faculty Scholarship

In discussing the varied LEA responses, the normative question naturally arises: Which model of immigration enforcement should an LEA embrace? If an LEA with no current immigration enforcement policy were to decide on a model, which model should it choose? Or, if an LEA wants to reconsider its current enforcement model, what factors should it consider in making its decision? The answers to these questions depend on the interests of individual LEAs-interests that may vary from LEA to LEA. The second contribution of this article then is to raise important questions that LEAs should consider in deciding which model is …

Voter Psychology And The Carbon Tax, Gary M. Lucas Jr

Faculty Scholarship

Economists across the political spectrum argue that a carbon tax is the most effective and economically efficient policy for addressing climate change. Voters, however, strongly oppose the carbon tax and instead favor “green” subsidies and command-and-control regulations. If carefully designed, these policies might complement a carbon tax, but by themselves, they will make global warming mitigation incredibly expensive and perhaps even infeasible. Moreover, if poorly designed, subsidies and regulations can be counterproductive.

This Article argues that the public dislikes the carbon tax because the tax possesses attributes that make it psychologically unappealing relative to other climate policy instruments. The Article …

Unlocking Exchanges, Brendan S. Maher

Faculty Scholarship

The fate of the Affordable Care Act is uncertain. Moreover, the nation is in an unusual state of political turmoil and may have no appetite for anything other than revolutionary changes to the ACA, if not its outright repeal. But press reports suggest even Republican officials formerly committed to its extirpation are now thinking instead about a measured path forward.

In any event, one fact about the ACA should not escape the attention of serious reformers: the legislation has already accomplished the difficult task of laying the ground work for a move away from employment-based (EB) insurance, a move scholars …

A Spatial Critique Of Intellectual Property Law And Policy, Peter K. Yu

Faculty Scholarship

Although geography has had an important and lasting impact on the development of intellectual property law and policy, at both the domestic and international levels, geographical perspectives and spatial analysis have thus far not attracted much attention from policymakers and commentators. Only recently have we seen greater linkage between these two undeniably connected fields. Even with such linkage, the discussion tends to focus narrowly on specific issues, such as the parallel importation of pharmaceuticals, the protection of geographical indications and the treatment of traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions.

This article aims to provide a systematic analysis of the linkage …

The Uniform Commercial Code Survey: Introduction, Jennifer S. Martin, Colin P. Marks, Wayne Barnes

Faculty Scholarship

The survey that follows highlights the most important developments of 2016 dealing with domestic and international sales of goods, personal property leases, payments, letters of credit, documents of title, investment securities, and secured transactions. Along with the usual descriptions of interesting judicial decisions highlighted in the survey, there has also been legislative progress in several areas. The 2012 amendments to U.C.C. Article 4A, which address issues related to the implementation of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, have been adopted by forty-six states and the District of Columbia, and introduced in Connecticut and Oklahoma. In …

Conflict Of Laws (2017), James P. George, Randy D. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

States’ and nations’ laws collide when foreign factors appear in a lawsuit. Nonresident litigants, incidents outside the forum, and judgments from other jurisdictions can create problems with personal jurisdiction, choice of law, and the recognition of foreign judgments. This article reviews Texas conflict cases from Texas state and federal courts during the Survey period from December 1, 2015, through November 30, 2016. The article excludes cases involving federal–state conflicts; intrastate issues, such as subject matter jurisdiction and venue; and conflicts in time, such as the applicability of prior or subsequent law within a state. State and federal cases are discussed …

Optimal Remedies For Patent Infringement, Keith N. Hylton, Mengxi Zhang

Faculty Scholarship

This paper derives optimal remedies for patent infringement, examining damages awards and injunctions. The fundamental optimality condition that applies to both awards and injunctions equates the marginal static cost of intellectual property protection with the marginal “dynamic” benefit from the innovation thereby induced. When the social value of the patent is sufficiently high, the optimal award induces socially efficient investment by giving the innovator the entire social value of her investment.

Citizen Scientists, Data Transparency, And The Mining Industry, Madison Condon

Faculty Scholarship

What happens when a community feels that the standards imposed by state and federal laws are insufficient to protect its health and environment? Or when the responsible government agencies lack the funding, competency, or political will for full enforcement of the law? One of the greatest hurdles facing citizen environmental advocates in these situations is a lack of access to environmental monitoring data. All routes available for policing industry—whether it be rallying community support for protest, petitioning a government agency for enforcement action, or bringing a citizen suit—require, as a first step, an understanding of whether and what pollution has …